Determination of Trace Copper in Natural Waters after Selective Separation by Flotation

Abstract

Microgram amounts of copper(II) in one liter of water are quantitatively separated selectively as copper(II) acetate with oleic acid surfactant at pH range 6.5—7.5. The floated scum is separated, after shaking for few seconds, and measured colorimetrically at 700 nm. Beer’s law is obeyed in the concentration range (0.5—5) × 10−4 mol dm−3, {3.18—31.8 ppm of copper(II)}. Alternatively, the copper in the scum is eluted by nitric acid 0.1 mol dm−3, completed to the suitable volume required for copper atomic absorption measurement at 324.7 nm with 1 ppm detection limit. The different factors affecting the selective flotation of copper(II) have been studied. It has been found that iron(III) seriously depresses the flotation efficiency. The flotation mechanism is discussed. The method of the separation and determination is rapid and applicable to 50 ppb copper(II) concentration level in natural waters.

Ion Flotation of Copper(II) and Lead(II) from Environmental Water Samples

“…The flotation and separation cells were of two types (Ghazy and Kabil, 1994). Type (a) was a cylindrical tube of 29 cm length and 1.2 cm inner diameter with a stopcock at the bottom and a stopper at the top.…”

“…It shows particular promise for treating large volumes of dilute aqueous solutions (Doyle and Lui, 2003). Although some work have been carried out for ion flotation of copper (Khalifa et al, 2001;Lazaridis, 2004;Doyle and Lui 2003;Ghazy and Kabil, 1994; 76 Stalidis et al, 1989;Stoica et al, 2001;Liu and Doyle, 2001a;Girek et al, 2004) and lead (Lui and Doyle, 2001b;Matis and Mavros, 1991) from aqueous, fresh and wastewaters, and that diphenylcarbazone (HDPC) was used as a complexing agent for spectrophotometric determination of metal cations (Balt and Van Dalen, 1963;Steven, 1966;Trinder, 1966), no attention has been paid towards the use of HDPC as complexing agent for the flotation of Cu(II) and Pb(II). Therefore, the objective of the present work was to investigate the feasibility of developing the use of HDPC as chelating agent for Cu(II) and Pb(II) removal from aqueous media by ion flotation, under the recommended conditions, in the presence of oleic acid as a surfactant.…”

Flotation separation of mercury(II) from environmental water samples using thiosemicarbazide derivatives as chelating agents and oleic acid as surfactant

“…The flotation cell was a tube of 16 mm inner diameter and 290 mm in length with a quick fit stopper at the top and a stopcock at the bottom (Ghazy and Kabil, 1994). The IR spectra of the ligands, and their Hg 2 þ complexes were recorded on Mattson 5000 FTIR Spectrophotometer using KBr disc method.…”

Separation via Flotation, Spectrophotometric Speciation, and Determination of Vanadium(IV) in Wastes of Power Stations

“…20 The first type (type 1), Scheme 1, 21 was a tube of 1.2 cm inner diameter and 29 cm length with a stopcock at the bottom. Such a cell was used to study the factors affecting the flotation efficiency.…”