Department of Chemistry, University of Roorkee, Roorkee-247 672 Manuscript received 16 October 1981, accepted 20 May 1983 A scheme for the identification of 26 phenols has been proposed. This is based on the reaction of aqueous peroxydisuiphate solution with the phenols (in 50% acetone-water solution) in presence of Ag+ as catalyst, resulting in the formation of differently coloured solutions (in most cases) with differing absorption-maxima in the visible range. Micro­gram amounts of phenols can be detected and identified by this method.