Simultaneous determination of antimony and bismuth by beta-correction spectrophotometry and an artificial neural network algorithm

Simultaneous determinations of antimony and bismuth were done by β-correction spectrophotometry and a feed forward neural network algorithm with back propagation of error. The sensitivity was improved using β-correction spectrophotometry. The determination of trace amounts of mixtures of Sb and Bi in various matrices (river, tap and industrial wastewater) were investigated by neural network and β-correction spectrophotometry using the complexes formed between pyrogallol red, Sb and Bi. The results showed that measurement is possible in the ranges of 0.05–5.0 and 0.2–3.2 μg ml−1 for Sb(III) and Bi(III), respectively. The results also show very good agreement between true and predicted concentration values and have the ability to use in routine analysis.