How to determine zinc in a plant.

[kenshi64]

Which would you prefer? I'm calculating the amount of zinc absorbed by a particular plant (yes, in theory it does accumulate zinc- B.Juncea).

 

[Borek]

Question doesn't make sense. How are you going to use AAS without a calibration curve?

 

[kenshi64]

Woops! ignore my ignorance, I was just told that, well doesn't the AAS give you the concentration directly? Gosh, just pointless maches *argh*

CHANGE: AAS or COLORIMETER

 

[kenshi64]

How would you extract zinc from a plant?

Hi!

So I basically need to find out how I'm supposed to extract zinc from a plant and its methodology and chemicals required. How do I do this? I found one article that is rather incomplete, it just says zinc was extracted using 0.1N HCl and not whether the plant's powder was treated with it or the entire plant was treated with it.

Here's a "www.sc.chula.ac.th/nrc-ehwm-fs/research/journal/5.pdf" .

 

[MrSid]

Your reference has some clues (there are citations about preparing samples of soil). Start with these and work through references that will be found in those initial citations. Literature research always gives clues about how to proceed and achieve reproducibility in any analysis.

Another reference (found in many science libraries) would be the A.O.A.C Methods which are matrix specific analyses for foodstuffs, crops, soil, and other agricultural i.e. They can be somewhat difficult to navigate but official methods can be found for plant and soil analysis.

Official Methods of Analysis of AOAC INTERNATIONAL,18th Edition

Wiki AOAC International...

 

[kenshi64]

Urgent: Some complexing agents for zinc.

Hi, I am to extract Zinc from plant tissue, with 0.1N HCl. But since its colorless I cannot determine the concentration(using the colorimeter) of zinc without adding a chemical that forms a complex with zinc and has a color.

 

[Borek]

Have you followed MrSid's hints?

 

[kenshi64]

Sorry, that's beyond me! :O I'm just a 17 year old guy! Please sympathize with me, this is tough enough with so much chemistry that's waay about my level!

 

[DrDu]

I suppose then that you don't have an atomic absorption spectrometer at hand but only a colorimeter.
Before determining the concentration of Zn usin colorimetry, you will have to separate it from other elements. That's all rather complicated.
I found an old article describing how this can be done and which in principle can be done in the lab of a school. However, it is in German and the method requires a lot of work.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jpln.19560740105/pdf

 

[kenshi64]

Talk about luck haha! My mum's been teaching german for 15 years, however, A complexing agent I did come across was zincon, which was holy costly! Yes, so sorry for the late up date. But I'm going with AAS since I can't find a complexing agent other than zincon for zinc.