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Aluminium and my day

I got interest with this aluminium :) I ran for half a day for finding this Aluminium sulphate container in my department. Let me explain the lovely experiment with Aluminium and alizarine :)

( Don't continue reading if your not interested in biotech or chemicals, this is a damn boring post)

Lowermost detection limit of Aluminium-Alizarine complex. 
Aluminium Can :) :) :D :P

An experiment, we did in our IMA (Instrumental Methods of Analysis). A sooper dooper experiment which I loved. This is because, me and one of my friend did it together while all others were doing record works.
Mam explained me the procedure, I explained my friend the procedure and we did the experiment.
I feel happy most times, when I'm provided with the responsibility. :) :D :P

Initially, I found  very difficult to understand the principle behind the experiment, but, mam made it clear by explaining twice :) The principle is very simple as follows:

Principle:
Alizarine red dye and aluminium sulphate when mixed together, aluminium absorbs alizarine red dye and hence the intensity of the dye gets reduced, therefore, the OD(Optical density) after addition of aluminium to the solution will be less comparing the OD of pure alizarine red dye.

Procedure:
We tried using two series of solutions. One series of test tubes containing only alizarine red and another set containing alizarine red and aluminium sulphate i.e., testing with and without alumiium, to check the absorption of aluminium. We checked the absorption by decrease in OD value (using Spectrophotometer)
First, we tried for different concentrations of alizarine red (1,2,3,4,5 ml), keeping aluminium concentration as constant (0.1 ml).
We found that absorption was good with 3ml of alizarine. So, next we tried varying aluminium concentration (0.025ml, 0.050 ml, 0.075, 0.1 ml, 0.125 ml) with fixed alizarine red concentration (3ml). We found that the absorption was very good from 0.1 ml onwards. Below that, 0.025ml, 0.050ml, 0.075 ml didn't give decrease in OD ( indicating no absorption).

We calculated the amount of aluminium alone in 0.1 ml of aluminium sulphate and it was 34.5 micro-grams.
Approximately 34.5 micrograms of aluminium absorbs 3 to 4 micrograms of alizarine red dye (calculated from our experiment)

Result:


34.5 micro-grams of Al was the lowermost detection limit by using Al- Alizarine red complex method.

Why this experiment?
Because calculating the amount of Al is very important in the industrial waste. Hence depending on the absorption of alizarine red ( the reverse of the above mentioned experiment) by our sample, the amount of aluminium present in the sample can be easily detected. But, the minimum amount of Al must be above 34.5 micro-grams to use this detection technique.

I'm very happy with this experiment, I enjoyed doing this one, but, I don't know the reason for the happiness, may be I was made responsible to do this experiment :) :D :P

After a long week... gonna have a cool sunday in hot sivakasi :) Good night tata.. bye.. :) 

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