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Topic: How to measure concentration of nitrates in a water sample  (Read 773 times)

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Offline MargaaMarius

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How to measure concentration of nitrates in a water sample
« on: March 18, 2019, 05:58:54 AM »
Disclaimer: English isn't my first language, and not the one I'm learing chemistry in, so I have no idea if my terminology is correct, since I've only learnt the terms in norwegian. If any words are wrong, please ask in a comment so I can try to explain what I mean and maybe even learn that the proper term is in english

For a school project, we are supposed to write about if/how agriculture has affects nearby water sources. After some googling, we decided to measure pH,  bacteria and nitrates,  as these seemed most relevant. We have an idea of how we are going to measure pH and bacteria, but have some questions regarding finding the concentration of nitrates. Is it ok to use titration? We've done this a couple of times already, when working with acids and bases, so titration would be a method we are familiar with. But what should we use as indicator and titrant? Or is there some other, better method?

Offline Borek

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Re: How to measure concentration of nitrates in a water sample
« Reply #1 on: March 18, 2019, 09:58:36 AM »
Determining nitrates by titration is not trivial. Try to google for "determination of nitrates in water" - the easiest method I can think of is to use strips, but their accuracy is rather low.
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