Spectrophotometric determination of iron (III) in tap water using 8-hydoxyquinoline as a chromogenic reagent

A simple, rapid and sensitive spectrophotometric method was developed for the determinationation of trace amounts of iron (III) using 8-hydroxyquinoline as a chromogenic reagent. The proposed method was based on the reaction of iron (III) with 8-hydroxyquinoline in chloroform solution to form a metal-oxine complex having a maximum absorption at 359 nm. Beers law was obeyed in the range of 1 to 14 ug/ml Fe3+. The recovery was between 98.60 and 103.30% with a coefficient of variation of 1.209%. The method was successfully applied to tap water samples and comparison with standard method showed the new method to be accurate and precise as the more sophisticated AAS commonly used for Fe determination.