Flotation-Spectrophotometric Determination of Ag(I) at the 10^-7 mol L^-1 Level Using Iodide and Ferroin as an Ion-associate

A simple and cost effective method for separation and preconcentration of Ag(I) at the $10^{-7}\;mol\;L^{-1}$ level in the environmental and mineral samples is present. The method is based on the flotation of Ag(I)-iodide complex as an ion-associate with ferroin in pH of 4 from a large volume of an aqueous solution (500 mL) using nheptane. The floated layer was then dissolved in dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) for the subsequent spectrophotometric determination. Beer's law was obeyed over a range of 2.0 ${\times}$ $10^{-7}$-4.0 ${\times}$ $10^{-6}$ mol $L^{-1}$ with the apparent molar absorptivity of 2.67 ${\times}$ $10^5$ L $mol^{-1}\;cm^{-1}$. The detection limit (n = 5) was 4 ${\times}$ $10^{-8}$ mol $L^{-1}$, and RSD (n = 5) obtained for 2.0 ${\times}$ $10^{-6}$ mol $L^{-1}$ of Ag(I) was 2.2%. The interference effects of a number of elements was studied and found that only $Hg^{2+}$ at low concentration, and $Pb^{2+}$, $Cd^{2+}$, $Cu^{2+}$, and $Fe^{3+}$ ions at moderately high concentrations were interfered. To overcome on these interference effects, the solution was treated with EDTA at a buffering pH of 4 and passed through a column containing Amberlite IR-120 ionexchanger resin, just before the flotation process. The proposed method was applied to determine of Ag(I) in a synthetic waste water, a photographic washing sample and a geological sample and the results was compared with those obtained from the flame atomic absorption spectrometry. The results were satisfactorily comparable with together, so that the applicability of the proposed method was confirmed in encountering with the real samples.