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Spectrophotometric determination of nitrate in small volume of seawater samples using a simple resorcinol method

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Abstract

A simple resorcinol method to determine nitrate (NO3−) in seawater using a microplate reader with a 48-well plate was established. The method involved the nitration of resorcinol in sulfuric acid to form a pink product that was detected at 505 nm. Reagent concentrations were optimized, and the effect of salinity on NO3− determination was investigated. The detection limit of this method was 0.8 µM, while the upper limit of the linear range was 100 µM. The recoveries ranged from 91.5 to 109.7% for spiked seawater samples with different salinities. The proposed method was compared with two reference methods, and the results revealed a good correlation. Compared to conventional methods that require the preparation of reactants, the proposed method used aqueous solutions as reagents for the reaction, which was simpler and more convenient. Compared to the methods that used organic solvents for the direct determination of NO3−, the proposed method was suitable for estuarine and coastal water samples with large salinity variations. All results indicated that the proposed method can satisfy the requirements of laboratory analysis and demonstrate high application potential for use in field determination.

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Funding

This study was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42006166), and the Special Fund for Marine Economic Development of Fujian Province (FJHJF-L-2021–11).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Global Change and Marine Atmospheric Chemistry, Third Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources, **amen, 361005, Fujian, China

    Lianghui Wang, Kunning Lin, Huige Guo & Yuanbiao Zhang

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  1. Lianghui Wang
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  2. Kunning Lin
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  3. Huige Guo
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  4. Yuanbiao Zhang
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Contributions

LW: investigation, methodology, validation, formal analysis, visualization, writing—original draft. KL: conceptualization, investigation, validation, formal analysis, writing—original draft, funding acquisition. HG: investigation, validation. YZ: conceptualization, writing—review and editing, supervision, project administration, funding acquisition.

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Correspondence to Kunning Lin or Yuanbiao Zhang.

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Wang, L., Lin, K., Guo, H. et al. Spectrophotometric determination of nitrate in small volume of seawater samples using a simple resorcinol method. Anal Bioanal Chem 414, 5869–5876 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-022-04152-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-022-04152-x

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