A spectrophotometric method of determination of the rare earth was studied by the solvent extraction of rare earth-Xylenol Orange chelate into xylene solution of trioctylethylammonium bromide(TOEA). The rare earth-XO-TOEA complexes are extracted into aromatic hydrocarbons such as benzene, toluene, and xylene, but not into polar solvents such as
n-butanol ethylacetate, methylisobutylketone, and nitrobenzene. The optimum pH range for the extraction were 6.36.7, 6.36.5, 5.86.9, 5.76.9, and 5.56.8 for lanthanum, praseodymium, cerium, gadolinium, and dysprosium, respectively. The absorption maximum of the complexes extracted into xylene were found at 605 nm for lanthanum, praseodymium, and cerium, 596 nm for gadolinium, and 590 nm for dysprosium. Beer's law held for about 04.5μg of rare earth per 5 ml of xylene. The molar absorptivity of the extracted species were 1.53 × 10
5, 1.42×10
5, 1.35×10
5, 8.5×10
4, 8.2×10
4 cm
-1 mol
-1 l for lanthanum, praseodymium, cerium, gadolinium, and dysprosium, respectively. The composition of the ternary complexes were estimated to be M: XO: TOEA=1:1:2 for gadolinium and dysprosium, whereas 1:2:
n for lanthanum, praseodymium and cerium. Combination ratio n of TOEA to metal-XO chelates in the latters could not be estimated by the commonly available methods. Thorium, vanadium, uranium, bismuth, aluminum, zirconium, chromium, nitrate, perchlorate and iodide interfered when triethylenetetramine and 1, 10-phenanthroline were added as masking agent.
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