Detection and Determination of Phosphorus in Water Samples Using Optimized and Portable Technology

Detection as a method for determining the presence of a chemical or biological agent, is a vital function within the domain of environmental monitoring and remediation. The nutrient pollutants (NPs), mainly nitrites, nitrates and phosphates that are applied commonly as fertilizers throughout American Midwest agricultural zones, have added up to the problems of Eutrophication that has been established among many researchers [1-4]. In this present work, we used Colorimetry and Ion Chromatographic methods for the detection and determining the presence of orthophosphate from Grays Creek in Jefferson City, Missouri, and try to introduce a sensitive and less expensive method. The merging of error between the Ion Chromatographic (IC) instrument and the handheld optical Sensor was found to be 10.35 %. The absorbance was taken at 610nm and the concentration ranges from 0.3-13.93ppm and the electric conductivity (EC) ranges from 236-418 S/cm. Normality Test (Shapiro-Wilk) on the IC data revealed passed (P = 0.787) whereas the equal Variance Test (Brown-Forsythe) has shown failed (P less than 0.050). Going by the Holm-Sidak method, the differences in the mean values among the treatment groups are greater than would be expected by chance, there is a very statistically significant difference (P = less than0.001), while with handheld optical Sensor on the hand, both the Normality Test (Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Equal Variance Test (Brown-Forsythe) Passed with P-values 0.155 and 0.713 respectively.