Benzeneacetaldehyde-4-hydroxy-alpha-oxo-aldoxime as a new analytical reagent for the spectrophotometric determination of cobalt

Benzeneacetaldehyde-4-hydroxy-α-oxo-aldoxime is proposed as a new sensitive and selective reagent for the spectrophotometric determination of cobalt. The reagent reacts with cobalt in the pH range 8.6–9.4 to form a yellow colored 1:3 chelate which is very well extracted in chloroform. Beer's law is obeyed in the concentration range 0.05–1.3 μg ml⁻¹ cobalt. The molar absorptivity of the extracted species is 2.746×10⁴ l mol⁻¹ cm⁻¹ at 390 nm. The proposed method is highly sensitive, selective, simple, rapid, accurate and has been satisfactorily applied for the determination of cobalt in synthetic mixtures, pharmaceutical samples, biological samples and alloys.