Determination of iron content within iron sands from Lampanah-Lengah estuary using various analytical methods

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Lampanah-Lengah iron sand deposit has been analysed by several researchers using XRD, and being reported that it contains hematite and magnetite. The accuracy of iron content data is crucial to analyse due to the economic benefit and environmental consequences. This current study aims to compare the accuracy of several analytical methods to convince the iron content finding. Several methods that were AAS, UV spectrophotometric, gravimetric and redox titration methods were calibrated by determining the iron content of pure iron powder (p.a. Merck) prior to analyse the iron content in Lampanah-Lengah iron sand sample. The accuracy of each method was 99.51; 99.26; 98.82; 96.41% respectively. However the iron contents found in Lampanah-Lengah iron sand sample was significantly different from various analytical methods. The finding were 60.49, 39.58, 34.82, 55.33 and 43.0 wt% detected by AAS, UV spectrophotometric, gravimetric and redox titration methods respectively. It concluded that AAS methods was recorded as the most accurate method for iron content determination in iron sand sample. The iron content is comparable to the common iron content in most samples of iron sand previously reported in several places in Indonesia.