Spectrophotometric Determination of Nickel(II) in Soil and Standard Alloy Samples Using 5-Methyl-2-acetylfuran-4-methyl-3-thiosemicarbazone (5-MAFMT)

A simple and selective spectrophotometric method was developed for the determination of nickel(II) using 5-methyl-2-acetylfuran-4-methyl-3-thiosemicarbazone (5-MAFMT) as a chromogenic reagent forming a yellow-colored complex at pH 9.5. The complex was instantaneous and stable for 5 h. The system obeyed Beer’s law in the concentration range of 0.06–0.60 µg/mL of nickel(II), with a correlation coefficient of 0.999. The molar absorptivity and Sandell’s sensitivity of the complex species were found to be 1.87 × 10⁴ L/mol.cm and 1.2 × 10^–3 µg/cm² at 361 nm, respectively. The limit of detection was 0.0713 µg/mL with the relative standard deviation (RSD) ≤1.0%. The proposed method is rapid, simple, sensitive, and successfully applied for the determination of nickel(II) when present alone or in the presence of other ions that are usually associated with nickel(II). The method was tested for nickel (II) determination in soil and various standard alloy samples. The recovery of nickel(II) in alloy samples using the developed method was >98% confirming the suitability of the method. Comparisons of the results with those obtained using an atomic absorption spectrophotometer for nickel(II) determination also tested the validity of the method at the 0.05 level.