DETERMINATION OF NITRATE IN MUNICIPAL WASTE-WATER BY UV SPECTROSCOPY

A method is proposed in which diode-array UV-visible spectroscopy and multivariate data analysis are applied to determine nitrate in municip al waste water. No filtering of the samples is required and no reagent s are added. The working range for the nitrate determination is 0.5-13 .7 mg/l (0.008-0.22 mM). The relative standard deviation was found to be 3.4%. Other constituents, notably total phosphorus, total nitrogen, ammonium nitrogen and iron can be determined simultaneously with the same method. The developed method can also be used to classify samples . The described method concept is well suited for in-line monitoring.