Cadmium Extraction from Solutions by Solid-Phase and its Trace Determination

A new sensitive and selective spectrophotometric method for determination of trace amounts of cadmium using a polyvinyl chloride membrane containing bis-(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate as a solid phase extraction medium was investigated. Bis-(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate has used as a plasticizer. Cd(II) in an aqueous solution was trapped on the membrane in the form of colorful Cd (II)-I^- - MG complexes (which MG is malachite green) and the cadmium complex was concentrated in the membrane. The absorbance of the green membrane was measured at 629 nm using a spectrophotometer, and then, the concentration of the cadmium was calculated using a calibration curve, which expressed the relationship between the Cd(II) concentration and the membrane absorbance after coloring for 25 min. The calibration curve was linear in the range of 10-760 μgL^-1 cadmium in the test solution. The detection limit based on the 3S_bl criterion was 1.8199 μgL^-1 and the relative standard deviations (RSD) were less than 4 % (n=5). The proposed method has been successfully applied to the determination of trace amounts of cadmium in the Tadjan River water sample (Sari-Iran), and the mean value of 28.7 μgL^-1 was obtained