Water quality monitoring system for determination of ionic nutrients by ion-exclusion chromatography with spectrophotometric detection on cation-and anion-exchange resin columns using water eluent

Abstract

A unified ion-exclusion chromatography (IEC) system for monitoring anionic and cationic nutrients like NH4+, NO2-, NO3-, phosphate ion, silicate ion and HCO3- was developed and applied to several environmental waters. The IEC system consisted of four IEC methodologies, including the IEC with ultraviolet (UV) form connected with detection at 210 nm for determining NH4+ on anion-exchange separation column in OH anion-exchange UV-conversion column in I- form in tandem, the IEC with UV-detection at 210 nm for determining simultaneously NO3- and NO3- on cation-exchange separation column in H+ form, the IEC with UV-detection at 210 nm for determining HCO3- on cation-exchange separation column in H+ form connected with anion-exchange UV-conversion column in I- form in tandem, and the IEC with visible-detection based on molybdenum-blue reaction for determining simultaneously silicate and phosphate ions on cation-exchange separation column in H+ form. These IEC systems were combined through three manually-driven 6-port column selection valves to select each separation column to determine selectively the ionic nutrients. Using this sequential water quality monitoring system, the analytical performances such as calibration linearity, reproducibility, detection limit and recovery were also tested under the optimized chromatographic conditions. This novel water quality monitoring system has been applied successfully for the determination of the ionic eutrophication components in sub-urban river waters.