Simultaneous determination of antimony and bismuth by beta-correction spectrophotometry and an artificial neural network algorithm

Simultaneous determinations of antimony and bismuth were done by P-correction spectrophotometry and a feed forward neural network algorithm with back propagation of error. The sensitivity was improved using P-correction spectrophotometry. The determination of trace amounts of mixtures of Sb and Bi in various matrices (river, tap and industrial wastewater) were investigated by neural network and beta-correction spectrophotometry using the complexes formed between pyrogallol red, Sb and Bi. The results showed that measurement is possible in the ranges of 0.05-5.0 and 0.2-3.2 mug ml(-1) for Sb(III) and Bi(III), respectively. The results also show very good agreement between true and predicted concentration values and have the ability to use in routine analysis. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.