Concepedia

Publication | Closed Access

A Syringe Gas-Stripping Procedure for Gas-Chromatographic Determination of Dissolved Inorganic and Organic Carbon in Fresh Water and Carbonates in Sediments

171

Citations

0

References

1973

Year

Abstract

A simple, rapid method for determining dissolved inorganic carbon in water is described. A 20-cm 3 sample of water is drawn into a 50-cm 3 polypropylene syringe and acidified by injection of 1 cm 3 of dilute sulphuric acid. Twenty-nine cubic centimeters of helium at atmospheric pressure is injected into the syringe followed by 10 sec of manual agitation to partition CO 2 between gas and liquid phase. The gas phase containing 60% of CO 2 from the sample is then analyzed by gas chromatography. This method has been used to determine dissolved inorganic and organic carbon in Canadian Shield waters and to determine total carbonates in sediments.