Abstract

The use of natural reagents from plant extracts for chemical analysis is one approach in the development of green analytical chemistry methodology. In this work, a natural reagent extracted from Phyllanthus emblica Linn. has been applied for the determination of iron(III) using a simple flow injection spectrophotometric method. The method was based on the measurement of a dark-purple complex formed by the reaction between iron(III) and the extracted solution in an acetate buffer (pH 5.6) at 570 nm. Under the optimum conditions, a linear calibration graph in the range of 0.50–20.0 mg L⁻¹ iron(III) was obtained with a correlation coefficient (r²) of 0.9996. The limit of detection and limit of quantification were 0.31 and 0.50 mg L⁻¹, respectively. The relative standard deviation was less than 2.50%. The proposed method was successfully applied for quantitative analysis of iron(III) in pharmaceutical preparations and water samples with a sampling rate of 90 samples h⁻¹. The results are in good agreement with those obtained by the official ICP-OES technique at the 95% confidence level. The presented method provides a simple, cost-effective and environmentally friendly approach which is suitable and useful for determining iron(III). Therefore, it can be considered as an alternative analytical technique in green chemistry.