Flow-injection determination of total iron in freshwater samples with neutralisation chemiluminescence

A flow-injection chemiluminescence method has been established for the determination of total iron in freshwater samples. The enhanced chemiluminescence emission was caused by the iron(II) from the neutralisation reaction of hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide without the use of any chemiluminescent reagent. The calibration graph was linear in the concentration range of 2.8-560 mu g L-1 (r2 = 0.9983, n = 8), with relative standard deviation (RSD; n = 4) in the range of 0.8-2.6%. The limit of detection (S/N = 3) was 0.56 mu g L-1 with injection throughput of 180 h-1. The effect of common anions and cations were studied over their environmentally relevant concentrations in freshwaters. The method was successfully applied to determine total iron in freshwater samples. Iron(III) was reduced to iron(II) by using hydroxylammonium chloride. The proposed method was compared with spectrophotometric method and there was no significant difference between the two methods at the 95% confidence level (t-test). Analysis of river water (certified reference material SLRS-4) for iron(II), after reduction of iron(III) with hydroxylammonium chloride, gave good results (2.17 +/- 0.22 mu M compared with the certificate value of 1.85 +/- 0.1 mu M).