Spectrophotometric Determination of Se (IV) in Environmental Samples Using a Novel Oxidative Coupling Reagent

• Published in: Environmental monitoring and assessment 2006-12, Vol.123 (1-3), p.431-437
• Main Authors: Subrahmanyam, P, Krishnapriya, B, Suvardhan, K, Rekha, D, Krishna, P. Murali, Rao, G. C, Lingappa, Y, Reddy, B. C. Venkata, Jayaraj, B, Chiranjeevi, P
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: absorption; oxidation; piperazine; selenium; soil sampling; variance; water pollution; wavelengths
• ISSN: 0167-6369; 1573-2959
• DOI: 10.1007/s10661-006-9581-2

A rapid, highly sensitive and selective spectrophotometric method for the determination of traces of selenium (IV) is described. The method is based on oxidation of oxidation of 3-methyl-2-benzothiazolinone hydrazone hydrochloride (MBTH) by selenium (IV) followed by coupling reaction with Piperazine in neutral medium to give pink colored derivative with λ ₘₐₓ 547 nm and is stable for more than 36 h at 35°C. Beer’s law is obeyed for selenium(IV) in the concentration range of 0.02–3.7 μg ml⁻¹ at the wave length of maximum absorption. The optimum reaction conditions and other analytical parameters were investigated to enhance the sensitivity of the present method. The detailed study of various interferences made the method more selective. The proposed method was successfully applied to the analysis of Selenium in polluted water, natural water samples, plant material, soil samples, synthetic mixtures and biological samples. The results obtained were agreed with the reported methods at the 95% confidence level. The performance of proposed method was evaluated in terms of Student’s t-test and Variance ratio f-test which indicates the significance of proposed method over reported method.