Flow system exploiting multicommutation to increase sample residence time for improved sensitivity. Simultaneous determination of ammonium and ortho-phosphate in natural water.

A flow system for the simultaneous determination of ammonium and phosphate in river water at the mug ml(-1) level employing a low expensive LED-based photometer is described. The manifold of the flow system comprised four analytical pathways containg a set of three-way solenoid valves and an automatic injector commutator. The signal measurements of both analytes were carried out using two LED-based photometers attached to the flow cells. A microcomputer running a programme written in quickbasic 4.5 provided facilities to control the system and to carry out simultaneously two analytical procedures also performing data acquisition. For the determination of ortho-phosphate the method based on reaction with molybdate and ascorbic acid was employed, while for ammonium the method based on reaction with hypochlorite and salicylic acid was selected. The four-pathway structure of the manifold allowed the sample incubation time to be increased to 130 s to permit the reaction to occur without a decrease in sample throughput. The usefulness of the system was ascertained by analyzing a set of water samples. Applying the paired t-test to results obtained employing reference methods, no significant difference at the 95% confidence level was observed for both analytes. Other profitable features such as an analytical throughput of 112 analyte determination per hour; relative standard deviations of 1.1 and 0.7% (n=6) ammonium and phosphate, respectively, reagent consumption of 0.3 mg ammonium molybdate, 0.75 mg salicylic acid, 3.3 mg ascorbic acid and sodium hypochlorite per determination; detection limits of 7.0 mug l(-1) NH(4)(+) and 17.0 mug l(-1) PO(4)(3-) were also achieved.