The determination of lanthanum,cerium and thorium without separations: The determination of lanthanum and cerium in thorium

A method is proposed for the spectrophotometric determination of small quantities of lanthanum, cerium and thorium in the presence of one another without separations. Cerium is estimated from its absorption peak in the ultraviolet region, thorium with thorin, and the 3 elements together with arsenazo. The lanthanum is calculated after subtraction of the combined absorbances of the arsenazo complexes of the thorium and cerium. The procedure can be readily applied to the determination of microgram amounts of the 2 rare earths in thorium. In this case the majority of the thorium is removed from the solution by solvent extraction with TTA before the estimation of the rare earths. The interference of iron is considered and proposals made for its removal.