Multivariate versus univariate calibration for nonlinear chemiluminescence data: Application to chromium determination by luminol-hydrogen peroxide reaction Original Research Article

Multivariate calibration is tested as an alternative to model chromium(III) concentration versus chemiluminescence registers obtained from luminol-hydrogen peroxide reaction. The multivariate calibration approaches included have been: conventional linear methods (principal component regression (PCR) and partial least squares (PLS)), nonlinear methods (nonlinear variants and variants of locally weighted regression) and linear methods combined with variable selection performed in the original or in the transformed data (stepwise multiple linear regression procedure). Both the direct and inverse univariate approaches have been also tested. The use of a double logarithmic transformation previous to the linear regression has been also evaluated. A new double logarithmic transformation previous to the linear regression is proposed in order to avoid the effect of the noise in the calibration model. Pre-processing, optimization and prediction ability of the multivariate calibration models has been studied at nine different experimental conditions including batch and FIA measurements. Box-plots, PCA and cluster analysis have been employed to test the prediction ability of the different models tested. Nonlinear PCR and nonlinear PLS provide the best results. Real samples have been analyzed and compared with the reference method. The results confirm the successful use of the proposed methodology.