Determination of antimony in impure zinc sulphate solution by coprecipitation followed by differential pulse anodic stripping voltammetry

A simple coprecipitation technique for the quantitative separation of the antimony present in impure zinc sulphate electrolyte followed by its voltammetric determination is described. Antimony in microgram levels is separated from the matrix zinc sulphate solution, which contains higher levels of copper, lead and cadmium, and is subsequently determined by differential pulse anodic stripping voltammetry (DPASV) in 3 M hydrochloric acid. Hydrous manganese dioxide is employed as the collector. This procedure, which effects considerable saving in time, is of comparable accuracy to the conventional spectrophotometric method using the antimony-rhodamine B complex. A series of synthetic zinc sulphate solutions spiked with known amounts of antimony as well as plant solutions gave near theoretical values.