A new procedure was developed for dispersive liquid-liquid micro extraction of cadmium prior to its determination by flame atomic absorption spectrometry. The major difficulty in combination of dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction with flame atomic absorption spectrometry is high background absorption of the extraction and disperser solvents that covers the absorbance of analyte. The background absorption was removed by changing the solvent of sedimented phase from organic to aqueous. In the proposed approach, tetrachloroethylene (C2Cl4) and tetrahydroforan (THF) were used as extraction and dispersive solvents respectively. Dithizone was used as complexing agent. Several factors that may be affect on the extraction process, such as, extraction solvent, disperser solvent, the volume of extraction and disperser solvent, extraction time, temperature of solution, concentration of chelating agent and pH were optimized. The effects of common coexisting ions on the recovery of cadmium were studied. Results showed that cadmium recoveries are almost quantitative in the presence of interfering ions. Under the optimal conditions the enrichment and enhancement factors were 34.5 and 26 respectively, the extraction and relative recoveries were 69% and 99% respectively, the calibration graph was linear in the range of 5-150 µg L-1, the detection limit was 1.2 µg L-1 and the relative standard deviation (n = 8) was 2.1%. The proposed method was applied successfully for determination of trace amounts of cadmium in water samples
background corrected dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction; dithizone; cadmium; flame atomic absorption spectrometry
