Field determination of trace iron in fresh water samples by visual and spectrophotometric methods

Sensitive visual and micro spectrophotometric methods have been developed for field determination of trace iron in fresh water samples. For the visual method, a water sample (0.45-microm filtrate acidified to 0.1 M HCl) was placed in a glass vial and mixed with a reagent solution containing 1,10-phenanthroline, sodium thiocyanate and 0.1 M HCl. Iron was extracted as pink ferroin thiocyanate with 1 ml of 4-methy-2-pentanone. The sample up to 20 ml was added step-by-step, until the color of the extract was detected visually. Without any special instrument or color standard, iron down to 0.001 mg 1(-1) (0.025 microg) in a sample can be determined with an error of 20% in the field. For the micro spectrophotometric method, the extract for 20 ml of sample was separated by capillary suction in a column (micro pipette chip) with acrylic fibers. A part of the extract was pushed out into a micro cell for the absorbance measurement at 525 nm. The column was re-usable after washing with ethanol. This method had a detection limit of 0.001 mg 1(-1) and allowed determinations within an error of 5%. The proposed methods were applied to deionized-, tap-, river-, lake- and reservoir-water samples.