Application of water extract of slippery elm tree leaves as a natural reagent for selective spectrophotometric determination of trace amounts of molybdenum(VI) in environmental water samples

A novel spectrophotometric method for the determination of molybdenum(VI) by using a natural reagent, water extract of slippery elm tree leaves, is developed. Molybdenum(VI) reacts with this natural reagent to form an orange colored product. The formed product shows maximum absorbance at 418 nm with a molar absorptivity value of 0.57 × 104 L mol−1 cm−1, and this method is linear in the 0.4–10 mg L−1 concentration range. The detection limit value was found to be 0.0350 mg L−1. The proposed method is simple, clean, low cost, selective, and sensitive. It was applied to the analytic samples with satisfactory results.