Liquid–liquid extraction study of tellurium(IV) with N-n-octylaniline in halide medium and its separation from real samples

N-n-Octylaniline in xylene is used for extractive separation of tellurium(IV) from hydrochloric acid media. Tellurium(IV) is extracted quantitatively with the 3% reagent in xylene from 5.5 to 7.5 M hydrochloric acid. It is stripped from organic phase with 1:1 ammonia and estimated spectrophotometrically with pyrimidine-2-thiol (4′-bromoPTPT). The effects of metal ion, acids, reagent concentration, diluents and various foreign ions have been investigated. The log–log plots of distribution ratio (DTe(IV)) versus N-n-octylaniline concentration indicate that the nature of extracted species is [(RR′NH2+)2 TeCl62−]org. The method affords binary separation of tellurium(IV) from gold(III), selenium(IV), bismuth(III), copper(II), lead(II), antimony(III), germanium(IV) and is applicable to the analyses of synthetic mixture containing associated metal ions and alloy samples. The method is simple, selective, rapid and accurate.