Spectrophotometric determination of iron after separation of its 9,10-phenanthrenequinone monoximate on microcrystalline naphthalene

A sensitive and selective spectrophotometric method has been developed for the determination of iron as Fe(II) or Fe(III) using 9,10-phenanthrenequinone monoxime (PQM) as the complexing agent. Fe(II) and Fe(III) react with PQM to form coloured water insoluble complexes which can be adsorbed on microcrystalline naphthalene in the pH ranges 3.7–6.2 and 2.0–8.4, respectively. The solid mass consisting of the metal complex and naphthalene is dissolved in DMF and the metal determined spectrophotometrically by measuring the absorbances Fe(II) at 745 nm and Fe(III) at 425 nm. Beer's law is obeyed over the concentration range 0.5–20.0 g of iron(II) and 20–170.0 g of Fe(III) in 10 ml of DMF solution. The molar absorptivities are 1.333 × 10⁴ 1 · mole^–1 · cm^–1 for Fe(II) and 2.428 × 10³1· mole^–1 · cm^–1 for Fe(III). The precision of determination is better than 1%. The interference of various ions has been studied and the method has been employed for the determination of iron in various standard reference alloys, bears, wines, ferrous gluconate, human hair and environmental samples.