A simple and high sensitive spectrophotometric method for ultra trace determination of ruthenium with its catalytic effect on the oxidation of pyronin B by periodate.

A new simple, selective, high sensitive and rapid method has been developed for spectrophotometric determination of ultra trace amounts of ruthenium based on its catalytic effect on the oxidation of pyronin B by periodate at lambdamax=555 nm. The described method is able to quantify ruthenium in the range of 0.1-100 ng ml-1 (r=0.9973), with a detection limit (S/N=3) of 0.036 ng ml-1. Under optimum conditions, this procedure has been successfully applied to determine the trace levels of ruthenium in the environmental and biological samples. The precision, expressed as relative standard deviation of three measurements, is better than 2.44%.