Liquid/liquid extraction separation of hafnium with amberlite La-1 from zirconium and other elements in citric acid solutions

Hafnium (10–110 μg ml^?1) is quantitatively extracted at pH 4.5 from 0.01 M citric acid with 0.1 M Amberlite LA-1 in xylene; it can be stripped with 0.1 M perchloric acid and determined spectrophotometrically with xylenol orange at 540 nm. Hafnium can be separated from binary and multicomponent mixtures by selective extraction and back-extraction. The method is suitable for determining hafnium in zircon.