Determination of zirconium with Xylenol Orange by flow injection spectrophotometry: application to eluates from technetium-99m generators

Abstract

A procedure for the determination of zirconium using Xylenol Orange has been developed from a conventional spectrophotometric one. An acidic medium of sulfuric rather than perchloric acid has been adopted, to achieve a fast reaction rate and greater sensitivity. Under optimised conditions, calibrations were found to be linear over a range of at least up to 10 ppm of zirconium. The detection limit was found to be 0.08 ppm and precisions (RSDs) at the 1, 3 and 5 ppm levels were 2.3, 1.9 and 0.2%, respectively. The procedure has been shown to be free of interferences from species which are present in the eluate from a technetium-99m generator, and has been applied to the determination of zirconium in such an eluate.