Reversed flow injection and sandwich sequential injection methods for the spectrophotometric determination of copper(II) with cuprizone

Two new flow methods, flow injection analysis (FIA) and sequential injection analysis (SIA), for the spectrophotometric determination of Cu(II) in water at trace levels have been developed and optimised. Both methods are based on the reaction with oxalic acid bis(cyclohexylidene hydrazide) (cuprizone) in alkaline media. The two procedures have been developed for the final aim to compare their performances and to offer new rapid heavy metals analysis tools, avoiding the use of extraction steps. A detailed study of the physico-chemical parameters affecting the systems performances has been carried out. The reversed FIA and sandwich SIA approaches offered the best sensitivity. In both cases, an extremely good linearity has been obtained within the range 0.06-4 μg ml⁻¹ (correlation coefficient r=0.9999), whereas the observed detection limits were 0.013 and 0.004 μg ml⁻¹, for FIA and SIA, respectively. Furthermore, due to the great similarity of the diffusion zones in the reaction slugs, our approach offers the opportunity to compare the two methods in analogous conditions. This SIA method, besides keeping its typical reagent saving features, offered analytical performances equivalent to those of FIA. To obtain these results, an original “stop-flow like” method was successfully employed in the SIA approach. Both methods were validated by analysis of real water samples, after copper addition, and certified reference samples of fortified and waste waters.