Predictability of the Electrical Conductivity of In situ Sea Water as a Function of Its pH

Abstract

The paper presents an empirical analysis which predicts the electrical conductivity of in situ sea water as function of its pH. Response coefficient of the sea water electrical conductivity ζ to the influence of its pH ϑ was evaluated to ascertain the reliability of the highlighted dependence. A univariate model was derived, validated and used for the predictive evaluation of the in situ sea water electrical conductivity. The validity of the model; ζ=exp[ϑ0.963] was rooted on the core model expression lnζ = ϑ0.963 where both sides of the expression are correspondingly approximately equal. Standard errors incurred in predicting the sea water electrical conductivity for each value of the sea water pH considered as obtained from experiment, derived model and regression model-predicted results were 0.5233, 1.2127 and 0.0027% respectively. Furthermore the correlation between sea water electrical conductivity and its pH as obtained from experiment, derived model and regression model were all > 0.9. The maximum deviation of the model-predicted sea water electrical conductivity (from experimental results) was less than 18%. This translated into over 82% operational confidence for the derived model as well as over 0.82 response coefficients for the dependence of in situ sea water electrical conductivity on its pH.