Spectrophotometric determination of vanadium using variamine blue and its application to synthetic, environmental and biological samples

A simple, rapid and accurate spectrophotometric method is described for the determination of trace amounts of vanadium using variamine blue (VB) as a chromogenic reagent. The method is based on the oxidation of variamine blue to form a violetcolored species on reaction with vanadium(V), having an absorption maximum at 570 nm. Beer’s law is obeyed in the range of 0.1–2.0 μg ml−1. The molar absorptivity and Sandell’s sensitivity were found to be 1.65 × 104 l mol−1 cm−1 and 0.003 μg cm−2, respectively. Optimum reaction conditions were evaluated in order to delimit the linear range. The effect of interfering ions on the determination is described. The proposed method has been successfully applied to the determination of vanadium in steel, pharmaceutical, environmental, and biological samples