Simultaneous spectrophotometric determination of uranium and thorium using arsenazo III by H-point standard addition method and partial least squares regression

Simultaneous determination of uranium and thorium using arsenazo III as a chromogenic reagent at pH 1.70 by H-point standard addition method (HPSAM) and partial least squares (PLS) calibration is described. Under optimum conditions, the simultaneous determinations of uranium and thorium by HPSAM were performed. The absorbencies at one pair of wavelengths, 649 and 669 nm, were monitored with the addition of standard solutions of uranium. The results of applying the HPSAM showed that uranium and thorium can be determined simultaneously with weight concentration ratios of uranium to thorium varying from 20:1 to 1: 15 in the mixed sample. By multivariate calibration methods such as PLS, it is possible to obtain a model adjusted to the concentration values of the mixtures used in the calibration range. In this study, the calibration model is based on absorption spectra in the 600-750 nm range for 25 different mixtures of uranium and thorium. Calibration matrices contained 0.10-21.00 and 0.25-18.5 mu g mL(-1) of uranium and thorium, respectively. The RMSEP for uranium and thorium were 0.7400 and 0.7276, respectively. Both proposed methods (HPSAM and PLS) were also successfully applied to the determination of uranium and thorium in several synthetic and real matrix samples.