DETERMINATION OF IRON CONTENT IN NATURAL MINERAL WATER: COMPARISON OF ICP-OES AND SPECTROPHOTOMETRIC METHOD

Crni Guber natural mineral water belongs to a group of highly mineralized iron-arsenic waters, which can be used for therapeutic purposes. In order to determine a more precise and accurate method for determining iron content, a comparison of ICP-OES and spectrophotometric method was performed. For the purposes of analysis using the ICP-OES method water samples were prepared with identical and different dilutions compared to the samples for the analysis performed using the spectrophotometric method. The G-test was used to check for the existence of outlier values in the obtained results, while the precision and accuracy of the method were verified by using the F-test and t-test. The aforementioned tests showed that the spectrophotometric method was more precise and accurate when the samples were prepared with identical dilution. When analyzing samples with different dilutions, the spectrophotometric method proved to be more precise, while in terms of accuracy there was no statistically significant difference between the methods.