Simultaneous determination of calcium, magnesium and zinc in different foodstuffs and pharmaceutical samples with continuous wavelet transforms

This work presents novel and very simple spectrophotometric methods by ratio spectra-continuous wavelet transformation for the simultaneous determination of ternary mixtures of calcium, magnesium and zinc without prior separation steps. The methods are based on the complexation reaction of these elements with bromopyrogallo red (BPR) at pH 9.4. The results showed that calcium, magnesium and zinc could be determined simultaneously in the range of 0.1-3.5 mg L-1, 0.2-3.2 mg L-1 and 0.5-3.8 mg L-1, respectively. Mexican hat and Morlet from the family of continuous wavelet transforms were selected and applied under the optimal conditions for multi-component determinations. In this study for improving the sensitivity the normalized spectra of divisors were used instead of standard spectrum of divisor. The method was tested by analyzing various synthetic ternary mixtures of Ca2+, Mg2+ and Zn2+. Under the working conditions, the proposed methods were successfully applied to simultaneous determination of elements in cows' milk, powder milk, pharmaceutical product and tea samples. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.