Extraction spectrophotometric determination of mercury(II) using thiacrown ethers and Bromocresol Green

A reasonably sensitive and highly selective spectrophotometric method for the determination of mercury(II) is proposed. The method is based on the extraction of the ion-associate formed by a mercury(II) thiacrown ether cationic complex with Bromocresol Green as the anionic counter-ion using chloroform as the extracting solvent. The effect of thiacrown ethers of different cavity sizes, namely 1,4,7,10,13-pentathiacyclopentadecane (PTP) and 1,4,7,10,13,16-hexathiacyclooctadecane (HTO), the thiacrown ether concentration, the extracting solvent, the bromocresol green concentration and the aqueous phase pH on the extraction were investigated. Measurement of the absorbance at the lambda(max) (420 nm) of the extracted ion-associate reveals that Beer's law is obeyed over 0.5-12.0 ppm mercury(II) for both ligands. Slight interference from copper(II) and cadmium(II) is exhibited by the PTP ligand, while HTO is negligibly affected by these metal ions. Strong interference from silver(I) is evident for both ligands while alkali, alkaline earth and other transition metals tested posed negligible interference. Analysis of mercury in synthetic complex mixtures was satisfactory.