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ABSTRACT
Total dissolved nitrogen (TDN), including dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) and dissolved organic nitrogen (DON), is of significant importance in aquatic systems due to its roles in numerous environmental processes, such as nutrients for agriculture activities, sources for lake and estuary eutrophication, and one of the major factors contributing to disinfection byproduct formation. The distribution and impact of DIN on these processes are relatively well-understood; however, information on DON is extremely limited, as there is no direct method for its quantification. DON is conventionally determined by subtracting DIN from TDN. However, significant errors may be introduced if DIN is the predominant species in samples with high concentrations of TDN. In order to deal with this challenge, pretreatment method for nitrogen gas stripping was investigated using 56 water samples collected from various ecosystems. The results indicated that after nitrogen gas stripping pretreatment, removal % of ammonia nitrogen (NH3–N) was more than 87.5%, and the ratios of removal of NH3–N/removal of TDN (β) were over 86.5% for most of 56 samples with high [NH3–N], indicating a high efficiency for removal of NH3–N, and that NH3–N was the predominant nitrogen species removed for the samples with high [NH3–N]. Therefore, nitrogen gas stripping is an appropriate pretreatment method for DON testing when NH3–N is the dominant inorganic nitrogen species.
Acknowledgments
This work was financially partially supported by the China Scholarship Council Foundation [No. 201206995025]. I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to Dr John Yang and Dr Bin Hua in Department of Agriculture & Environmental Science, Lincoln University of Missouri, USA, for their instructive advice and guidance on my thesis.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.