Design of a field flow system for the on-line spectrophotometric determination of phosphate, nitrite and nitrate in natural water and wastewater

This study describes the design and optimisation of a field flow system for the in-situ collection and on-line determination of phosphate, nitrate and nitrite by flow injection analysis-spectrophotometry. The method is based on the initial determination of phosphate as its phosphoantimonylmolybdenum blue complex which is then oxidized on-line by nitrite and the decrease in absorbance is monitored at 880 nm. Nitrate is determined as the difference between total and initial nitrite content in a separate flow after reduction to nitrite in a cadmium reductive column. The calibration curves were linear in the range 0–2.00 mg L−1 P-phosphate, 0–10.00 mg L−1 nitrite and 0–7.00 mg L−1 nitrate with correlation coefficients of 0.9979, 0.9993 and 0.9995, respectively. The detection limits, calculated as 3S/N, were 0.15 mg L−1 for P-phosphate, 0.17 mg L−1 for nitrite and 0.09 mg L−1 for nitrate. The reproducibility was below 3.0% (n = 7). Method validation in the analysis of natural water and wastewater samples revealed that it can efficiently be applied to the determination of the target analytes, with recoveries in the range of 92–108%.