Determination of trace uranium by resonance fluorescence method coupled with photo-catalytic technology and dual cloud point extraction

•The uranium in samples was extracted and purified by dCPE with [uranyl-sal1].•The uranium was determined by photo-catalytic RF method with [uranyl-sal2].•Coupling with separation, purification and analysis procedures exhibits advantages.

In this paper, two kinds of salophens (Sal) with different solubilities, Sal1 and Sal2, have been respectively synthesized, and they all can combine with uranyl to form stable complexes: [UO22 +-Sal1] and [UO22 +-Sal2]. Among them, [UO22 +-Sal1] was used as ligand to extract uranium in complex samples by dual cloud point extraction (dCPE), and [UO22 +-Sal2] was used as catalyst for the determination of uranium by photocatalytic resonance fluorescence (RF) method. The photocatalytic characteristic of [UO22 +-Sal2] on the oxidized pyronine Y (PRY) by potassium bromate which leads to the decrease of RF intensity of PRY were studied. The reduced value of RF intensity of reaction system (ΔF) is in proportional to the concentration of uranium (c), and a novel photo-catalytic RF method was developed for the determination of trace uranium (VI) after dCPE. The combination of photo-catalytic RF techniques and dCPE procedure endows the presented methods with enhanced sensitivity and selectivity. Under optimal conditions, the linear calibration curves range for 0.067 to 6.57 ng mL− 1, the linear regression equation was ΔF = 438.0 c (ng mL− 1) + 175.6 with the correlation coefficient r = 0.9981. The limit of detection was 0.066 ng mL− 1. The proposed method was successfully applied for the separation and determination of uranium in real samples with the recoveries of 95.0–103.5%. The mechanisms of the indicator reaction and dCPE are discussed.

Graphical abstractExtracting and purifying the uranium in complex samples by dCPE with [UO22 +-Sal1]. 2. Detecting super sensitively uranium by photo-catalytic RF method with [UO22 +-Sal2]. 3. Coupling with separation, purification and analyses procedures exhibits a number of advantages including high selectivity, high sensitivity and low costFigure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload as PowerPoint slide