Nutrients: Practical notes on their determination in sea water

These notes are aimed primarily at the freshwater chemist beginning to conduct analyses of nutrients in saline waters, but they will also be useful to the complete newcomer to the application of automated colorimetric techniques to natural waters in general. The emphasis is on automated techniques, but much of the material should be of interest to analysts who still use manual methods.

The term 'nutrients' is a little difficult to define precisely, but from the point of view of the marine chemist, phosphate, nitrate, nitrite, ammonia, and silicate are those most commonly encountered.