Determination of Copper after Preconcentration as Its 1-Nitroso-2-naphthol Complex onto Activated Carbon

Copper tends to be much more of an environmental hazard than a human hazard. Most environmental, biological and alloy samples generally have a trace amount of copper at level of ngmL^-1. In the determination of trace amount of copper, various methods, including ICP-MS, ion chromatography, anodic stripping analysis, and electrothermal atomic absorption spectrometry have been used. Many of these methods either are time-consuming or require complicated and expensive instruments. Therefore, other methods that can determine the low concentrations of copper rapidly and conveniently in real samples were required. Flame atomic absorption spectrometry is a simple and well available technique for the determinations of many metals in the real samples. However, its main problem is the low sensitivity for trace metals at ngmL^-1 level. This limitation can be overcome by the use of a preconcentation procedure. In the present work, a column separation-preconcentration method has been established for the flame atomic absorption spectrometric determination of trace amount of copper separated on activated carbon as 1-nitroso-2-naphthol complex. The proposed technique was applied for the determination of copper in stream water, ground water and diluted brass solution