Abstract

Conventional spectrophotometric methods for simultaneous determination of nickel, lead and zinc in forms of complexes with a reagent is not feasible due to the overlap of their absorption spectra. A multivariate calibration method was used to overcome this problem. In this study, the calibration model was constructed based on absorption spectra of 30 mixture standards in the range from 490 to 600 nm. Factors influencing experimental results such as amount of reagents, pH, and color development time were optimized. The standard calibration ranges for determination of nickel, lead and zinc were found at 0.5-5 ppm. The method was applied for determination of these ions in tap water samples at ppm level, with recoveries (and RSD) of nickel, lead and zinc were 103.3 % (3.0 %), 74.9 % (11.5 %) and 104.6 % (4.6 %), respectively.