Kinetic-spectrophotometric determination of free cyanide by stopped-flow reversed flow injection analysis

A stopped-flow reversed flow injection method for the determination of free cyanide is proposed. Pyridine-barbituric acid mixture is injected in the flow system as reagent to form the colour species with cyanide. The flow is stopped when the reagent zone comes in the flow cell, where absorbance-time data are collected at 580nm wavelength. The linear range of the determination is 0.1 -10μg/ml CN-. The sampling rate is 60h-1 and the relative standard deviation is 1.6% (n=16) at 5.0 μg/ml CN-1 level. With satisfactory results, the proposed method was applied to the determination of free cyanide in wastewater without sample pretreatment.