Elimination of the interferences of anions in the kinetic spectrophotometric determination of vanadium (V) solution.

Accurate determination of vanadium (V) in industrial waste water is of great importance in environmental, biological and toxicological studies. Most of kinetic spectrophotometric methods based on the catalytic effect of vanadium (V), when applied to real samples for determination of trace levels of vanadium (V) lack the satisfactory sensitivity and selectivity. This may be attributed to the serious interferences of various anions which are common pollutants in industrial waste water. The oxidation of gallic acid by ammonium persulphate, catalysed by vanadium (V) was chosen for our study. The effect of the serious interferences of various anions such as chloride, bromate, bromide, chromate, iodide, iodate, molybdate, carbonate and sulphate on the net absorbance given by 4 microg l(-1) of vanadium (V) solution were studied. The minimum concentrations of citric acid, EDTA, ascorbic acid and oxalic acid as leveling off agents required to level off interfering effects due to the aforementioned anions in the kinetic determination of vanadium (V) were 50, 70, 80 and 120 microg ml(-1), respectively. In the presence of optimum concentrations of effective leveling off agents, the dynamic range can be extended and sensitivity increased as compared with the proposed method without levelling off agents. The proposed method is a rapid, sensitive and selective method for the determination of ultra trace amounts of vanadium (V) in real samples with satisfactory results.