Automatic buffer capacity model building for the purpose of water quality monitoring

in this paper, buffer capacity profiles are used in the framework of automa tic monitoring of water quality. The aim of the proposed methodology is to automatically and stepwise build buffer capacity models for each particular titrated sample, and to quantify the individual buffer systems that consti tute the total buffer capacity. An automatic and robust model building algo rithm has been developed and applied to many titration curves of effluent a nd river water samples. It is illustrated that the application of automatic ally built buffer capacity models mostly results in similar or better estim ations of ammonium and ortho-phosphate in the samples compared to a priori fixed buffer capacity models. The automatic modelling approach is also adva ntageous for alarm generating purposes on e.g. river waters, because unexpe cted buffers are easily detected.