During the last decades chemists have witnessed the development of thousands of new catalytic reactions driven by need and interest from both academic and industrial settings [1]. The characteristic behavior of a catalytic process is due to the fact that the reaction product is simultaneously required for both the chemical and electrochemical reactions in order to regenerate and transform the depolarizer, respectively [2]. Indeed, the catalytic action is very frequent in many reactions in pharmacy, biology, biochemistry, and in environmental and industrial processes [3,4]. The importance of catalytic reactions has motivated many researchers to study of these reactions and numerous papers have been published in organic electrochemistry, electrosynthesis, electrochemical generation of gasses, electrochemical reactions in fuel cells, electrocatalytic hydrogenation, electrode reactions occurring in electrochemical sensors, electrochemical degradation of pollutants and electrochemical reactions taking place at matrix-supported electrocatalysts. In this work, the electrochemical oxidation of 4-(Piperazin-1-yl) phenol (1) has been studied in the presence of glutathione (2a) and N-acetylcysteine (2b). Our results indicate that electrochemically generated p-quinoneimine (1a) participates in a catalytic reaction with glutathione and N-acetylcysteine. It is shown that the catalytic current depends on the concentration of glutathione (or N-acetylcysteine) and solution’s pH. In addition, the observed homogeneous rate constant (kobs) of catalytic reaction of electrochemically generated pquinone- imine (1a) with glutathione (or N-acetylcysteine) was investigated using digital simulation method.
