High-performance liquid chromatographic determination of uranium using solvent extraction and bis(salicylaldehyde) tetramethylethylenediimine as complexing reagent

The reagent bis(salicylaldehyde)tetramethylethylenediimine has been used for the determination of dioxouranium(VI), based on complexation in aqueous solution at pH 6, followed by extraction in chloroform and HPLC determination on a Hypersil ODS (3 mu m) column. The complex was eluted with the ternary mixture methanol -acetonitrile-water (40:30:30, v/v/v), with UV detection at 260 nm. Oxovanadium(IV), iron(III), copper(II), cobalt(II), nickel(II) and palladium(II) were completely separated and did not interfere in the determination of uranium. The linear calibration range and detection limits have been obtained. The method has been applied to the determination of uranium together with copper, iron and nickel in mineral ore samples.