Rapid coprecipitation-separation and flame atomic absorption spectrometric determination of lead and cadmium in water with cobalt (II) and ammonium pyrrolidine dithiocarbamate

Abstract

A coprecipitation technique which does not require complete collection of the precipitate was proposed for the determination of trace lead and cadmium in water with flame atomic absorption spectrometry (FAAS) after preconcentration of lead and cadmium by using cobalt (II) and ammonium pyrrolidine dithiocarbamate (Co-APDC) as coprecipitant and known amount of cobalt as an internal standard. Since lead, cadmium and cobalt were well distributed in the homogeneous precipitate, the concentration ratio of lead to cobalt, and cadmium to cobalt remained unchanged in any part of the precipitate. The amount of lead and cadmium in the original sample solution can be calculated respectively from the ratio of the absorbance values of lead and cadmium to cobalt in the final sample solution that is measured by FAAS and the known amount of the lead and cadmium in the standard series solutions. The optimum pH range for quantitative coprecipitation of lead and cadmium is from 3.0 to 4.5. The 16 diverse ions tested gave no significant interferences in the lead and cadmium determination. Under optimised conditions, lead ranging from 0 to 40 µg and cadmium ranging from 0 to 8 µg were quantitatively coprecipitated with Co-APDC from 100 mL sample solution (pH ∼ 3.5). This coprecipitation technique coupled with FAAS was applied to the determination of lead and cadmium in water samples with satisfactory results (recoveries in the range of 94.0–108%, relative standard deviations <6.0%).