Novel sensitive spectrophotometric method for the trace determination of cyanide in industrial effluent.

The high toxicity of the cyanide ion at low concentration necessitates its analysis in a variety of environmental samples with a very low cyanide content. A new sensitive spectrophotometric method has been developed for the trace determination of cyanide with ninhydrin (NH) in an alkaline medium. Beer's law is obeyed in the range of cyanide concentration 0.04-0.24 microg cm(-3), and the molar absorptivity at 590 nm is 2.20 x 10(5) dm3 mol(-1) cm(-1). The Sandell's sensitivity of the product is 0.000118 microg cm(-2). The optimum reaction conditions and other important analytical parameters have been investigated. The results obtained by using the proposed method for environmental samples agree well with those obtained by the Aldridge standard method.