A new spectrophotometric method for the determination of ferrous iron in the presence of ferric iron

A new spectrophotometric method for the determination of ferrous iron concentration in samples containing ferric iron is presented. This new method is a modification of the Muir o‐phenanthroline ferrous iron determination method. The new method consists of the quantitative spectrophotometric determination of Fe(II) by o‐phenanthroline, but in which the ferric iron is complexed with sodium fluoride to eliminate interferences. A critical experimental comparison between the Muir spectrophotometric method, the Kolthoff titrametric method and the new proposed method is presented. Whenever Fe(III) accounts for more than 50% of the total iron in a sample, the method of Muir overestimates Fe(II). The proposed method has a range of 1–10 μg ferrous iron. It is as insensitive to other metal ions as the original method of Muir and is insensitive to Fe(III) up to a point where Fe(III) might be as high as 95% total iron. The proposed method is suitable for Fe(II) determination in bacterial leaching systems, where Fe(II) might be as low as 1% of total iron.