Dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction and spectrophotometric determination of cobalt in water samples

A new simple and rapid dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction has been applied to preconcentrate trace levels of cobalt as a prior step to its determination by spectrophotometric detection. In this method a small amount of chloroform as the extraction solvent was dissolved in pure ethanol as the disperser solvent, then the binary solution was rapidly injected by a syringe into the water sample containing cobalt ions complexed by 1-(2-pyridylazo)-2-naphthol (PAN). This forms a cloudy solution. The cloudy state was the result of chloroform fine droplets formation, which has been dispersed in bulk aqueous sample. Therefore, Co-PAN complex was extracted into the fine chloroform droplets. After centrifugation (2 min at 5000 rpm) these droplets were sedimented at the bottom of conical test tube (about 100 µL) and then the whole of complex enriched extracted phase was determined by a spectrophotometer at 577 nm. Complex formation and extraction are usually affected by some parameters, such as the types and volumes of extraction solvent and disperser solvent, salt effect, pH and the concentration of chelating agent, which have been optimised for the presented method. Under optimum conditions, the enhancement factor (as the ratio of slope of preconcentrated sample to that obtained without preconcentration) of 125 was obtained from 50 mL of water sample, and the limit of detection (LOD) of the method was 0.5 µg L−1and the relative standard deviation (RSD, n = 5) for 50 µg L−1 of cobalt was 2.5%. The method was applied to the determination of cobalt in tap and river water samples.