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A method of the determination nitrate nitrogen (NO3−-N) in high-salinity water samples

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Abstract

The determination of nitrate nitrogen (NO3−-N) is a key step in the pretreatment of nitrogen isotope determination, but how to determine NO3−-N in high-salinity water samples simply and efficiently is always a difficult problem. A spectrophotometric method for the determination of nitrate is presented and verified in this paper. Samples with different salinity were added to determine the known concentration gradient of NO3−-N. The results show that the nitrate content can be determined between 0.2 ~ 2.8 mg/L by ultraviolet–visible spectrophotometer (hereafter as UVS), and the relative error is about 10%. A standard curve of the same salinity should be attempted for a water sample with known salinity. Precon-Isotope Mass Spectrometry (hereafter as Precon-MS) was used to verify the determination of sample concentration by UVS, and the relative error was less than 8%. This paper presents a simple and efficient method for the determination of NO3−-N in high-salinity water samples, which has made great progress in the determination of nitrate nitrogen in samples and provides a theoretical basis for the determination of nitrogen isotopes in the pretreatment process of water samples.

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Acknowledgements

This work was sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41991252) and State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology (SKLLQG1912), Central Higher Education Foundation of Chang'an University (300102290505).

Funding

This work was sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41991252) and State Key laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology (SKLLQG1912), Central Higher Education Foundation of Chang'an University (300102290505).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi’an, 710061, China

    Jing Hu & Weiguo Liu

  2. School of Water and Environment, Chang’an University, Xi’an, 710054, China

    Zhi Zhuang, Mengyan Pan, Tianhao Han & Yuliang Li

Authors
  1. Jing Hu
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  2. Zhi Zhuang
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  3. Mengyan Pan
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  4. Tianhao Han
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  5. Yuliang Li
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  6. Weiguo Liu
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by JH and ZZ. The first draft of the manuscript was written by ZZ, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. YL and WL are responsible for ensuring that the descriptions are accurate and agreed by all authors. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Yuliang Li or Weiguo Liu.

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Hu, J., Zhuang, Z., Pan, M. et al. A method of the determination nitrate nitrogen (NO3−-N) in high-salinity water samples. Chem. Pap. 76, 1739–1744 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11696-021-02007-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11696-021-02007-w

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