Spectrophotometric determination of iron in environmental and food samples using solid phase extraction

A simple, selective and highly sensitive extraction method has been developed for the determination of iron(II) spectrophotometrically after solid phase extraction. The absorbance is measured at λmax 644 nm. Beer’s law was obeyed up to 450 ng mL−1 of iron. The molar absorptivity, Sandell’s sensitivity, detection and quantification limits were calculated and found to be 1.09 × 105 L mol−1 cm−1, 0.51 ng cm−2, 1.98 and 6.0 ng mL−1, respectively and compared with parameters obtained without using solid phase extraction method. After reduction of Fe(III) by addition of 2.0 mL of 10% hydroxylamine HCl, the system was applied to the total iron. The interference of various ions has been studied in detail and the statistical evaluation of the experimental results is reported. The proposed methods have been successfully applied for the determination of trace amount of iron in environment water, soil and botanical reference materials with recovery range (98.71–101.51%).