A New Spectrophotometry Determination of Cyanide by Solvent Extraction as Tris-(1,10-Phenanthroline)-Iron (II)-Thiocymate

Abstract

By shaking aqueous cyanide solution with nitrobenzene contained sulfur, thiocyanate is formed and is extracted into the nitrobenzene as an ion pair of thiocyanate anion and tris-(1,10-phenanthroline)-iron(II) chelate cation. By measuring the color intensity of the organic phase at 516 nm, cyanide is determined spectrophotometrically. A linear calibration curve is obtained up to 4 × 10⁻⁵M of cyanide in the aqueous phase.

Key Words:

• cyanide
• thiocyanate
• spectrophotometry
• solvent extraction
• tris-(1,10-phenanthroline)-iron(II)