Rapid determination of small amount of aluminum in zinc base alloy

Abstract

A simple and rapid titrimetric method was proposed for the determination of 0.010.3% of aluminum in zinc base alloy. For the separation of aluminum from large amounts of zinc and other metals, the benzoate precipitation method was applied, first in the presence of a large amount of ammonium acetate and then in the presence of thioglycollic acid. Optimum amounts of ammonium acetate, benzoate and thioglycollic acid were decided. The amount of iron which was precipitated with aluminum benzoate had no effect on the recovery of aluminum in the reprecipitation step. The proposed method was applied to the analysis of synthetic sample and secondary zinc base alloys. Aluminum recovery of more than 95% was obtained with several percent of relative error. A single determination could be done within 45 hrs.