Water Science & Technology Vol 66 No 1 pp 105–112 © IWA Publishing 2012 doi:10.2166/wst.2012.119

Co-precipitation of Ni, Cr, Mn, Pb and Zn in industrial wastewater and sediment samples with copper(II) cyclo-hexylmethyldithiocarbamate for their flame atomic absorption spectrometric determination

Ayodele Rotimi Ipeaiyeda and Adekunle Johnson Odola

A co-precipitation technique for nickel(II), chromium(II), manganese(II), lead(II) and zinc(II) with the aid of copper(II) cyclo-hexylmethyldithiocarbamate was established. The influences of some analytical parameters such as pH, sample volume, amounts of cyclo-hexylmethyldithiocarbamate and copper(II) on the recovery of metal ions were investigated. The heavy metals in the precipitate were determined by flame atomic absorption spectrophotometry. The range of detection limits for the heavy metals was 0.003–0.005 mg/L. The atomic spectrometric technique with co-precipitation procedure was successfully applied for the determination of Ni, Cr, Mn, Pb and Zn in industrial wastewater and sediment samples from Ladipo stream in Lagos, Nigeria. The mean concentrations for these metals using co-precipitation procedure were not significantly different from corresponding concentrations obtained using spectrometric techniques without co-precipitation procedure.

Keywords: co-precipitation; cyclo-hexylmethyldithiocarbamate; environmental samples; heavy metals; spectrometry

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