“…Current methods of separation such as chemical precipitation (Massoumi, andHedrick, 1969), electrodeposition (Ruotolo andGubulin, 2002), cementation (Chang et al, 2007), ultra-filtration (Hong et al, 1998), ion exchange (Shao et al, 1991), activated carbon adsorption (Wilson et al, 2006), liquid-liquid extraction (Sarma and Reddy, 2002;Maruyama et al, 2007) and solidphase extraction (SPE) (Hennion, 1999) are less selective. Where Ni(II) ions occur at low concentrations, there is a problem of interference from closely-related ions (Pourreza et al, 2006;Kiptoo et al, 2007). However, it has been our observation that most ion-imprinting studies do not report optimisation studies, most likely because of their long, tedious and time-consuming nature.…”