Spectrophotometric flow injection determination of trace iodide in table salt and laver through the reaction of iodate with 3,5-Br2-PADAP and thiocyanate

A new simple, rapid and sensitive spectrophotometric flow injection method for the determination of trace iodide is described based on an ion associate of iodate (IO₃ ^–) with 2- (3,5-dibromo-2-pyridylazo)-5-diethylamino-phenol (3,5-Br₂-PADAP) and thiocyanate (SCN^–). In a strongly acidic medium, this unstable violet product was formed with an absorption maximum at 605 nm. Flow injection is an ideal method to reproducibly monitor the transient signal. Various parameters were optimized using the Super Modified Controlled Weighted Centroid Simplex Method (SMCWC). Under the optimum experimental conditions, iodide could be determined in the range of 1.00 × 10^–6 and 2.4 × 10^–5 mol l^–1. The correlation coefficient of the calibration curve is 0.9991. With a sampling frequency of 80 h^–1, the detection limit for iodide is 5.0 × 10^–7 mol l^–1. The proposed method has been applied to the determination of trace iodide after oxidizing I^– in table salt or laver to IO₃ ^–. In addition, the mechanisms of the ion association reaction was studied. Received: 15 August 1996 / Revised: 10 October 1996 / Accepted: 16 October 1996