Direct and selective spectrophotometric method for the determination of vanadium in steel, environmental and biological samples

A simple, direct and selective spectrophotometric method for determination of vanadium is described. The present methodology is based on the strong oxidizing power of vanadium (V). Vanadium (V) selectively oxidizes leucocrystal violet (LCV) to crystal violet in the presence of phosphoric acid. The violet colored dye obtained shows maximum absorbance at 590 nm. Beer's law is obeyed in the concentration range 0.06-0.6 mu g ml(-1). The molar absorptivity and Sandell's sensitivity are found to be 6.78 x 10(4) l mol(-1) cm(-1) and 0.0044 mu g cm(-2), respectively. The proposed method is simple, direct, and sensitive. It has been successfully applied for the determination of vanadium in various environmental, biological and steel samples. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.