A simple and sensitive spectrophotometric determination of nitrate and nitrite in water samples

JAWORSKI MARÍA; SIRI GUILLERMO; CASELLA MÓNICA

Asian Journal of Research in Chemistry

Dr. (Mrs.) Monika. S. Daharwal

Lugar: Raipur; Año: 2011 vol. 4

0974-4150

This paper presents the development of an analytical spectrophotometric technique to quantify nitrate and nitrite anions differentially in a rapid and simple way. For the determination of nitrate, the absorbance is measured at 220 nm and HCl is used as the sole reagent. For the determination of nitrite, a method in which a peroxovanadate complex is decolorized by nitrite, was employed as basis for the quantitative determination of this ion in water samples.The spectrophotometric method presented here was developed to provide information about the concentrations of nitrate and nitrite ions during the catalytic reduction of nitrate in drinking water. The calculated concentrations of NO2- and NO3- agree with the true concentrations within 5% for NO3- and 1% for NO2-, showing that the developed method is useful for the determination of both components. The results obtained with the proposed method agree well with those obtained by the standard IC method.