Manganese is a necessity for the proper function of several enzymes and is an essential micro-nutrient for the function of the brain, nervous system and normal bone growth. It optimizes enzyme and membrane transport functions.1,2 Similar to other essential metals, both excess and deficiency of manganese in the body can cause serious impairment of vital physiological and biochemical processes, excessive intake can cause lesions, headache, psychotic behavior, drowsiness and other related symptoms and/or diseases. [3][4][5] Therefore, it is important from an analytical point of view to develop sensitive and economical methods for determination of the trace amounts of manganese.Separation and preconcentration based on cloud point extraction (CPE) are becoming an important and practical application of the use of surfactants in analytical chemistry. 6,7 The technique is based on the property of most non-ionic surfactants in aqueous solutions to form micelles and to separate into a surfactant-rich phase of a small volume and a diluted aqueous phase when heated to a temperature known as the cloud point temperature. The small volume of the surfactant-rich phase obtained with this methodology permits the design of extraction schemes that are simple, cheap, highly efficient, speedy and of lower toxicity to the environment than those extractions that use organic solvents.Cloud point extraction has been used to separate and preconcentrate organic compounds as a step prior to their determination in hydrodynamic analytical systems such as liquid chromatography 8 and capillary electrophoresis. 9 The phase separation phenomenon has also been used for the extraction and preconcentration of metal ions after the formation of sparingly water-soluble complexes.
10CPE has been widely studied as a preconcentration step in conjunction with detection by spectrophotometry, FIA-spectrofluorometry, FAAS, ICP-AES, HPLC and CE for the determination of various metal ions.11-18 CPE in combination with FAAS for the determination of manganese has also been reported. 19,20 When cloud point extraction is employed for the extraction of metal ions, the generation of suitable chelating complexes is the main step in analysis.Several ligands, such as 1-(2-thiazolylazo)-2-naphthol (TAN), 13,19 ammonium pyrrolidinedithiocarbamate (APDC), 14 8-hydroxyquinoline (Oxine), 15 dithizone, 16 diethyldithiocarbamate (DDTC), 17 2-(5-bromo-2-pyridylazo)-5-diethylaminophenol (5-Br-PADAP), 18 and 1-(2-pyridylazo)-2-naphthol (PAN), 19 have been used in cloud point extraction of metal ions. The chelating reagent 1-phenyl-3-methyl-4-benzoyl-5-pyrazolone (PMBP) forms complexes with more than 40 metal ions and has found numerous applications in trace element separation and preconcentration by solvent extraction 21,22 and solid phase extraction. [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35] Even so, it has rarely been used in cloud point preconcentration. The aim of this work was to optimize the use of PMBP in cloud point extraction preconcentration of manganese(II) ...