Dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction technique combined with UV–Vis spectrophotometry for determination of zirconium in aqueous samples

Dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction coupled with UV–Vis spectrophotometry was applied for the determination of zirconium in aqueous samples. In this method a small amount of chloroform as the extraction solvent was dissolved in pure ethanol as the disperser solvent, then the binary solution was rapidly injected by a syringe into the water sample solution containing Zr(IV), xylenol orange and cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB). The formed ion-associate was extracted into the fine chloroform droplets. The detection limit for Zr(IV) was 0.010 μg mL^−1. The precision of the method, evaluated as the relative standard deviation obtained by analyzing of 10 replicates, was 2.7 %. The practical applicability of the developed method was examined using natural waters and ceramic samples.