Novel catalytic procedure for the determination of ultratrace zirconium

A novel catalytic spectrophotometric procedure has been proposed for the determination of ultratrace zirconium. The calibration graph is linear within the range of 0 ng·ml-1 to approximately 110 ng·ml-1, and the detection limit is 0.4 ng·ml-1Zr(N). Most of foreign ions have no interfering effect except for Cu2+, Fe3+ and Cr(VI). Their interferences could be eliminated by EDTA masking and manitol, or by reducing Cr(VI) to Cr(III). The procedure has been satisfactorily applied to the determination of zirconium in zirconium bronze and simulated samples.