An extraction system of Zephiramine-thiocyanatocobalt (II) -chloroform was used as a pretreatment procedure for determination of cobalt by the graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry. When the aqueous/organic phase volume ratio(
Vw/
Vo) was 25ml/5 ml, the best extractability of the ion-pair was observed over the range of 4 M HCl to pH 8 when the concentrations of Zephiramine and potassium thiocyanate were more than 2 × 10
-3 M and 0.04 M, respectively. The established extraction procedure was as follows: To 20 ml or less amount of the sample solution containing not more than 0.7 μg of cobalt in a separatory funnel, add 2 ml of 2.5 M potassium thiocyanate solution and 2 ml of 5.0 × 10
-2 M Zephiramine solution. If necessary, adjust the pH to below 8 with hydrochloric acid. Dilute the solution to 25 ml with water, and add 5 ml of chloroform. Shake the mixture for
ca.5min, and allow the phases to separate for
ca. 15min. For the measurement of atomic absorption, the organic extract (20 μl) was injected into a graphite furnace and then dried (200 °C-30 s), ashed (930°C-60 s) and atomized (2800°C10 s) with an argon flow rate of31/min. When a sample solution taken was 20 ml for the extraction(
Vw/
Vo= 25ml/5ml), the linearity of the absorbance (240.7 nm cobalt line)
vs. the concentration of cobalt was observed up to 0.7 μg/20 ml (35 μg/l) of cobalt. In this case the apparent sensitivity for 1% absorption was estimated to be 0.011μg/20 ml(0.55μg/l) of cobalt and the coefficient of variation(
n=10) of this method was 2.0% for 0.5μg/20 ml(25μg/l) of cobalt. Numerous cations and anions gave no interference effect even when they were present in 10000 fold amounts (by weight) over cobalt. This method was applied to the analyses of cobalt in the copper mine drainage and commercial reagents of iron and nickel salts.
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