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ICGSCE 2014 pp 281–289Cite as

Reflectometric Optosensor for Visual Detection of Ammonia Based on Silica Pellet Sensing Material

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Abstract

Ammonia (NH3) has been widely used in the manufacture of fertilizers that applied to soil, but the high consumption of fertilizers will end up with water pollution. Owing to the deleterious effects of NH3 to human and environment, a new optosensor for NH3 has been fabricated based on silica pellet sensing material. Microsilica was synthesized by sol-gel method in the presence of cobalt(II) chloride hexahydrate (CoCl2·6H2O), followed by manual grinding process to obtain micro-sized silica particles. Due to the non-transparent pellet material used for NH3 sensing, a fiber optic reflectance spectrophotometer was employed for monitoring of reflectance signal transduction event as the pellet colour changed from pink to blue hue upon reaction with NH3 at optimum pH 13. Due to the high porosity and surface area of silica microparticles were used as immobilization matrix, the immobilized Co2+ ion demonstrated broad dynamic linear range from 18 to 100 ppm NH3 with a fast response time of 3 min. The reflectometric sensing protocol involves a single-step NH3 assay which merely requires dispensing small aliquots of NH3 onto the reaction surface of the pellet sensor. This makes on-site NH3 detection more user-friendly and convenient when compared to traditional electrochemical-, infrared- and gas chromatography-based methods.

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Acknowledgment

We gratefully acknowledge Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia for the Young Researchers Encouragement Grant (GGPM-2014-035) and Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education for Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS/2/2014/SG01/UKM/02/1) and Exploratory Research Grant Scheme ( ERGS-RDU120604).

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Correspondence to Ling Ling Tan .

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© 2015 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore

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Mohamed Noor, N.S., Tan, L.L., Zainuddin, S.N., Chong, K.F., Heng, L.Y., Tajuddin, S.N. (2015). Reflectometric Optosensor for Visual Detection of Ammonia Based on Silica Pellet Sensing Material. In: Hashim, M. (eds) ICGSCE 2014. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-505-1_33

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