An adsorption-catalytic test method for determining vanadium

The promoting effect of vanadium(V, IV) in the reaction of gallic acid oxidation with bromate ions in aqueous solutions was studied, and the dependence of the rates of catalytic and noncatalytic reactions on the concentration of components was found. A catalytic mechanism was proposed based on the experimental results and data of quantum-mechanical calculations. The linear dependence of the rate of the catalytic reaction on the concentration of vanadium(V)/vanadium(IV) was used to determine these ions in solutions by catalytic photometry. The detection limit was 0.01 μg in an aliquot portion of the test solution; the determination error was less than 20%. The conditions were found for stabilizing the properties of paper supports for more than 30 days, since the interaction of filter and chromatographic papers with bromate ions was found. An adsorption- catalytic test method was proposed for the semiquantitative visual determination of vanadium ions in water and aqueous solutions by the color of the pretreated paper strip immersed in the test solution. The detection limit for vanadium ions was 0.1 mg/L. The 100-fold amounts of Ni(II), Mn(II), Cr(III), and Co(II) do not interfere with the determination. The method was tested on river and sea water samples from different sources.