Flow injection photometric determination of zinc and copper with zincon based on the variation of the stability of the complexes with pH.

A flow injection photometric method for the sequential determination of zinc and copper in mixtures was developed based on the variation of the stability of the chromogenic complexes between the analytes and the reagent zincon with pH. At pH 5.0 only the Cu-zincon complex exists, whereas at pH 9.0 the copper and zinc chelates co-exist. A three-channel manifold was implemented containing two alternating buffer streams (pH 5 and 9) which permit the colored reaction products to be formed sequentially at both pH values, and consequently the mixtures can be resolved. A continuous preconcentration unit (Chelex-100) was used in order to increase the sensitivity of the method, thus allowing the analysis of water samples in which the analytes are present at the ng ml-1 level. On the other hand, preconcentration was not required when the analytes were determined in brass. Under the optimum conditions and using a preconcentration time of 2 min, the detection limits (3 sigma) were found to be 0.35 and 0.80 ng ml-1 for zinc and copper, respectively. The repeatability of the method, expressed as the RSD, was in all instances less than 3.1%. Considering the sequential determination of both species, a sampling rate of 70 h-1 was obtained if preconcentration of the samples was not required.