Spectrofluorimetric determination of EDTA with Cu(II)-tiron chelate

A spectrofluorimetric method for the determination of EDTA in real samples such as mayonnaise, powder detergent and cleansing cream with tiron (4,5-dihydroxy-1,3-benzenedisulfonic acid) as a fluorimetric reporter was developed. When tiron is chelated with Cu(II), the fluorescent intensity is decreased by a quenching effect. However, when Cu(II)-tiron chelate reacts with EDTA, fluorescent intensity is increased as tiron is released. Several experimental conditions such as pH of the sample solution, the amount of Cu(II), the amount of tiron, heating temperature and heating time were optimized. Fe(III) interfered more seriously than any other ions, interference of Fe(III) could be disregarded, because Fe(III) was scarcely contained in selected real samples. The linear range of EDTA was from $8.0{\times}106{-8}\;M$ to $2.0{\times}10^{-6}\;M$ . With this proposed method, the detection limit of Fe(III) was $5.2{\times}10^{-8}\;M$ . Recovery yields of 92.7~99.3% were obtained. Based on experimental results, it is proposed that this technique can be applied to the practical determination of EDTA.