Abstract
The analysis of nitrate in seawater and hypersaline waters should take account of a significant “salt effect”. Procedures developed for fresh water and marine waters must be applied cautiously to highly saline waters. The most widely used standard method for the determination of nitrate-nitrogen (NO3-N) in fresh and marine waters involves the quantitative reduction of nitrate by the Cd column technique followed by colorimetric procedures. In our study, three approaches to estimate NO3-N in highly saline waters were examined. The first involved dilution. This approach overcame the salt effect but dilution limited the detection of low concentrations of nitrate in highly saline waters. The second involved the use of standard nitrate solutions in saline water. This method is not recommended because of nitrate impurities in AR grade salts. The third- and preferred approach-involved the use of standard additions. “Spikes” of a known volume of NO3-N standard solution were added to natural saline waters. Nitrate values estimated by the stadard addition method were used to calculate an equation for salt error correction at different salinities applicable to waters with the same relative ionic composition as seawater. This could then be used to correct nitrate determinations in highly saline waters where standards made in distilled water were used for calibration. Many previously published data for NO3-N in saline water used methods of analysis which do not take account of salt error and are therefore probably in error.
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Ghassemzadeh, F., Sherwood, J., Geddes, M.C. et al. The analysis of nitrate in highly saline waters. International Journal of Salt Lake Research 6, 269–278 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02449929
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02449929