A simple spectrophotometric method for the determination of phosphate in soil, detergents, water, bone and food samples through the formation of phosphomolybdate complex followed by its reduction with thiourea

A simple spectrophotometric method is developed here for the determination of phosphate present in the samples of soil, detergents, water, bone and food based on the formation of phosphomolybdate complex with the added molybdate followed by the reduction of the complex with thiourea in aqueous sulfuric acid medium. The system obeys Beer's law at 840nm in the phosphate concentration range, 0.5-10.0 mu g/ml. Molar absorptivity, correlation coefficient and Sandell's sensitivity values are found to be 1.712 mol(-1) cm(-1), 0.9769 and 0.0555 mu g cm(-2) respectively. For a comparison of the results determined from the developed method, phosphate present in the same set of samples is determined separately following an official method. The results of the developed method are agreeing well with those of the official phosphomolybdate method. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.