The speciation of reactive metallic species is important in environmental and biological studies, because their bioavailability and toxicity depends on the reactivity or lability of the species. 1 Our previous studies revealed the usefulness of catalytic methods for the speciation of reactive vanadium, 2 iron 3-5 and molybdenum 6 species in natural water. Especially, the catalytic spectrophotometric method 3 using an ironcatalyzed oxidation reaction of o-phenylenediamine (OPDA) with hydrogen peroxide can be used to determine reactive iron with well-characterized forms, i.e., Fe 3+ and Fe III Li 3-in , where i = 1 or 2 for a unidentate ligand and i = 1 for a bidentate ligand (L n-), as naturally occurring species in water samples without any chemical pretreatment. The water sample is usually acidified before analysis. However, acidification should be avoided for speciation, because it changes the chemical forms of iron, e.g., the dissociation of unreactive iron(III) hydroxide(s) and complexed iron species. 4,5 Flow injection analysis (FIA) is suitable for the catalytic method, because of easy and precise control of the kinetic processes of a micro volume of the sample. PTFE tubes are most commonly used for the manifold of the FIA system. However, iron in a neutral or basic solution is adsorbed on the inner wall of the PTFE tube, although adsorption can be used for the preconcetration of iron. 7 The inhibition of adsorption with magnesium(II) was reported, 7,8 but was insufficient for iron. Therefore, we studied the influence of the adsorption of iron, and developed its evaluation method for a reliable FIA using the above-mentioned catalytic reaction. The reactive form of iron was characterized by an equilibrium study of hydroxo, fluoro and oxalato Fe(III) complexes. The proposed FIA method was applied to the speciation of reactive and unreactive iron in river-and tap-water samples.
Experimental
ReagentsUnless stated otherwise, all chemicals were of analyticalreagent grade. Ultrapure water with ≥ 18 MΩ m and Ultrapur HCl and NaOH solutions (high-purity reagents, Kanto Chemical) were used throughout. An OPDA solution (60 mM) was prepared by dissolving the reagent in water. This solution was stored in a refrigerator at 5˚C and used within 12 h. An iron stock standard solution (1.00 g L -1 of Fe(III)) was prepared by dissolving FeNH4(SO4)2·12H2O (purity ≥ 99.0%) in 0.1 mol L -1 HCl. Working iron standard solutions containing 1 mM HCl were prepared by diluting the stock standard solution with 1 mM HCl before use. Iron solutions with higher pH values (> 3) were prepared by adding 0.1 mM NaOH into the working iron standard solution, diluting with water, and used after equilibrating for 24 h at 25˚C in polystyrene bottles. In a complexation study, the working iron solution was mixed with a Na2C2O4 or NaF solution at pH 3 just before the determination. If necessary, the iron concentrations in these solutions were determined by atomic-absorption spectrophotometry (AAS) after acidification to 0.1 mol L -1 HCl. Humic acid (H...