Automatic spectrophotometric method for the determination of europium in mixtures with yttrium and other lanthanides

An automatic spectrophotometric method for the determination of europium in the presence of yttrium and other lanthanides is described. The method is based on a modification of a recently devised manual procedure consisting of the reduction, on a Jones reductor, of europium(III) to europium(II) which is used to reduce molybdophosphate to a molybdenum blue. The method is capable of analysing solutions containing 10-400 μg of europium per ml at a rate of 20 samples per hour. There is no interference from yttrium or other lanthanides and the method is suitable for application to europium determining after a group separation. When applied to mineral samples coefficients of variation between 2.5 and 3.8% were obtained. (orig.)