Kinetic-spectrophotometric determination of trace amounts of vanadium

A simple and sensitive kinetic-spectrophotometric method is described for the determination of vanadium and the possible mechanism of catalytic reaction is proposed. The method is based on the vanadium(V)-catalyzed oxidation of 1,8-diaminonaphthalene (DNA) by potassium bromate (Tiron as activator) at pH 3.8 and 40 degrees C. The reaction was monitored spectrophotometrically by measuring the increase in absorbance of oxidation products at 505 nm after a fixed time (6 min). The proposed method allowed the determination of vanadium in the range 0.025-15 ng ml(-1) with good precision and accuracy and the detection limit was down to 0.01 ng ml(-1). The method was found to be relatively selective and was applied successfully to the determination of vanadium in food and hair samples without previous separations. Recovery experiments have also been performed; excellent results were obtained.