Quantitative Recovery of Trace Amounts of Cyanide in Surface Waters Using a Modified Serfass Distillation Procedure

Abstract

A procedure involving a modification of the Serfass distillation with an absorption tube is presented, including data for the recovery of cyanide from different types of surface waters. The result of the distillation procedure is an interference-free solution that is suitable for the colorimetric determination of cyanide. The procedure utilizes the pyridine-pyrazolone colorimetric test and possesses a limit of detection on distilled water standards of 0.005 mg/l with coefficients of variation ranging from 3 to 14% for three different surface waters investigated.

Key Words:

• cyanide
• water analysis
• toxic substance