The present paper outlines novel, simple and sensitive method for the determination of palladium by flame atomic absorption spectrometry (FAAS) after separation and preconcentration by cloud point extraction (CPE). The cloud point methodology was successfully applied for palladium determination by using new reagent 4-(2-naphthalenyl)thiozol-2yl azo chromotropic acid (NTACA) and hydrophobic ligand Triton X-114 as chelating agent and nonionic surfactant respectively in the water samples and alloys. The following parameters such as pH, concentration of the reagent and Triton X-114, equilibrating temperature and centrifuging time were evaluated and optimized to enhance the sensitivity and extraction efficiency of the proposed method. The preconcentration factor was found to be (50-fold) for 250 ml of water sample. Under optimum condition the detection limit was found as 0.067 ng ml(-1) for palladium in various environmental matrices. The present method was applied for the determination of palladium in various water samples, alloys and the result shows good agreement with reported method and the recoveries are in the range of 96.7-99.4%. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.