Recent Advances in Electroanalytical Methods for Determination of Nutritive Salts in Seawater

The nutritive salts in seawater are essential for the growth of marine phytoplankton, and their contents can make impacts on ocean primary productivity and marine ecosystem structure. Therefore, monitoring the concentrations of nutritive salts in seawater is of great importance for evaluating the contamination of seawater and promoting the environmental protection in ocean and coastal zones. Compared with other analytical methods for nutritive salts, electrochemical methods show many advantages such as easy use, high sensitivity, good selectivity and rapid analysis. This article reviewed the recent advance in electroanalytical methods for detection of nutritive salts in seawater, including nitrate, nitrite, ammonia nitrogen, phosphate and silicate. The detection principles and the practical applications of these methods were described. Additionally, this review provided an outlook of the further development in this field.