The possibility of smartphone camera to determine iron(III) in solution

Abstract

Determination of iron in solution is usually done by using instruments, such as Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer (AAS) and UV-Visible Spectrophotometer. However, the availability and the use of these instruments in Indonesia is limited due to the expensive price. Nowadays everyone has smartphone with advanced camera features. This study focuses on the determination of iron (III) using a non-instrument method, namely digital image colorimetry. This method is using smartphone camera to capture the digital image of sample. Smartphone cameras used on this study are based on Android operating system with the specification of 16-megapixel and OS operating system with the specification of 12-megapixel. Digital images that has been captured by smartphone camera are processed using MATLAB to determine the RGB intensity. The image processing results then compared with the results from UV-Visible spectrophotometer. The result shows the linearity of the RGB color calibration curve from the smartphone camera is on a part with the calibration curve that generated by the UV-Visible spectrophotometer. This indicates that smartphone camera has a possibility to determine iron (III) in solution by using digital image colorimetry.