Spectrophotometric simultaneous determination of uranium and thorium using partial least squares regression and orthogonal signal correction

Abstract

A simple, novel and sensitive spectrophotometric method was described for simultaneous determination of uranium and thorium. The method is based on the complex formation of uranium and thorium with Arsenazo III at pH 3.0. All factors affecting the sensitivity were optimized and the linear dynamic range for determination of uranium and thorium found. The simultaneous determination of uranium and thorium mixtures by using spectrophotometric methods is a difficult problem, due to spectral interferences. By multivariate calibration methods such as partial least squares (PLS), it is possible to obtain a model adjusted to the concentration values of the mixtures used in the calibration range. Orthogonal signal correction (OSC) is a preprocessing technique used for removing the information unrelated to the target variables based on constrained principal component analysis. OSC is a suitable preprocessing method for PLS calibration of mixtures without loss of prediction capacity using spectrophotometric method. In this study, the calibration model is based on absorption spectra in the 600-760 nm range for 25 different mixtures of uranium and thorium. Calibration matrices contained 0.10-21.00 and 0.25-18.50 µg mL-1 of uranium and thorium, respectively. The RMSEP for uranium and thorium with OSC and without OSC were 0.4362, 0.4183 and 1.5710, 1.0775, respectively. This procedure allows the simultaneous determination of uranium and thorium in synthetic and real matrix samples with good reliability of the determination.