Simple and rapid spectrophotometric determination of iron after preconcentration as its 1,10-phenanthroline complex on the natural polymer "chitin".

Preconcentration by collection of metal complexes on chitin has been applied to the spectrophotometric determination of iron in water. The iron is collected as its 1,10-phenanthroline (phen) complex on a column of chitin in the presence of tetraphenylborate as counter-ion. The iron(II)-phen complex retained on the chitin is eluted with an acetone-1M acetic acid mixture (8:2 v/v), and the absorbance of the eluate is measured at 512 nm. Beer's law is obeyed over the concentration range 1.1-11.2 mug of iron in 10 ml of eluate. In the presence of EDTA as masking agent, Ca, Mg, Al, Mn, Zn, Cd and Pb do not interfere in concentrations up to 100 times that of iron(II) and Co, Ni and Cu do not interfere in concentrations up to 20 times that of iron(II). Common inorganic anions do not interfere in concentrations up to 10,000 times that of iron(II). The proposed method has been applied to determination of iron in tap water.