The use of Chromazurol S in the presence of a mixture of cationic and non-ionic surfactants for the spectrophotometric determination of iron in cereals

Simple and sensitive methods for the spectrophotometric determination of iron(III) in food, based on the formation of coloured complexes of Fe(III) with Chromazurol S (CAS) in the presence of tetradecyltrimethylammonium bromide (TTA) or octadecyltrimethylammonium chloride (ODTA) and Triton X-100 (TX100), have been developed. Optimum pH and the concentrations of CAS, TTA, ODTA, and TX100 ensuring maximum absorbance have been determined. For the Fe-CAS-TTA-TX100 system the molar absorptivity is 1.12 × 105 L/(mol cm) at 650 nm; for Fe-CAS-ODTA-TX100 it is 1.35 × 105 L/(mol cm) at 659.5 nm. Beer’s law was obeyed for iron concentration in the range 0.08–0.56 μg/mL for the complex Fe-CAS-TTA-TX100 and 0.08–0.64 μg/mL for Fe-CAS-ODTA-TX100. The influence of several interfering ions has been discussed. The stoichiometry of the complexes was established by applying Job’s method. The more sensitive method, based on the Fe-CAS-ODTA-TX100 system, has been applied to the determination of iron in cereals. To evaluate the accuracy of the elaborated method, the determined content of Fe was compared to the declared value as well as to the result obtained by the reference ICP-OES method.