Fluorimetric Determination of Phosphate in Sea Water by Flow Injection Analysis

A sensitive method for the determination of trace amounts of phosphate by fluorescence-quenching detection / FIA is proposed. The fluorescence of Rhodamine B(RB) was quenched with the formation of the ion associate of molybdophosphate with RB;${\lambda}_{ex}$ and ${\lambda}_{em}$ were 560nm and 580nm, respectively. A calibration graph was linear over the ranges from $10^{-8}$ to $3{\times}10^{-6}M$ of phosphate (~0.3~93ppb of phosphorus). The relative standard deviation was 1.2% with $8{\times}10^{-7}M$ phosphate solution and sampling rate was 15 samples / h. The proposed method was applied to the determination of phosphate in sea and river water samples.