On the Variation of Silicate Content in Sea Water during its Storage

Abstract

As the first step in the investigation of silicate in sea water, dissolution of silicate from various kinds of containers and from organic remains during the storage was studied.The amount of dissolution of silicate from glass bottles during its storage was fairly large, which was more than 105 μg-atoms/L on an average about a month later from the collection of samples, though the effect was different with different nature of glass materials of each bottle.Rapid dissolution of silicate from plankton diatoms was also found when sea water contained plankton diatoms of more than 105in cell numbers per liter.By these reasons it is recommended that silicate determination in oceanographic research should be done on board soon after sampling. If this is impossible, sea water should be filtered off and stored in paraffine coated bottles.