Determination of thallium(I) by flotation-spectrophotometric method using iodide and rhodamine B

A method for the trace amount determination of Tl(I), via its preconcentration, is proposed. The method is based on the reaction of iodide, Tl(I) and Rhodamine B in a weakly acidic medium. In this process an ion-associated complex is formed, which is floated at the interface of aqueous-cyclohexane layers. Various amounts of Tl(I) by a subsequent separation and dissolution of the floated complex in methanol could be determined, spectrophotometrically. Beer's law was obeyed for the Tl(I) content in the range of (0.8-8.0) x 10(-7) mol l(-1) with a correlation coefficient of 0.9974. The conditional molar absorptivity was found to be 1.0 x 10(6) l mol(-1) cm(-1) at 560 nm, which indicated the considerable sensitivity of the procedure. The detection limit (DL) was 4.7 x 10(-8) mol l(-1) and the RSD (n = 5) for 4 x 10(-7) mol l(-1) of Tl(I) was 3.34%. None of the alkaline cations was interfered, and the interference of many other metal ions was eliminated via ion-exchange separation using a cation-exchanger resin, Amberlite IR-120, before the flotation step. The reliability of the procedure was confirmed by determining the Tl(I) contents of synthetic laboratory waste water by both flotation spectrophotometry and graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry (GFAAS). The recovery was 92.3-95.4% for 1 x 10(-7) and 4 x 10(-7) mol l(-1), respectively. The precision and accuracy of the results were comparable via F and t tests at the 95% confidence level.