Sciencemadness Discussion Board - Water Analysis Machine/Instrument

Water Analysis Machine/Instrument

aga - 19-8-2015 at 09:06

Would anybody have a suggestion for the best machine (or type) for the analysis of water, particularly in respect of dissolved carbonate, magnesium, nitrogen etc.

N, P, K, Ca, S, Mg and oxygen content are the major variables, with Fe, Cl, Mn, B, Zn, Cu and Mo levels being desirable.

It's for scientifically growing plants hydroponically, so accurately measuring the ppm of each component of the water will be vital.

m1tanker78 - 19-8-2015 at 17:09

Quote: Originally posted by aga

Would anybody have a suggestion for the best machine (or type) for the analysis of water, particularly in respect of dissolved carbonate, magnesium, nitrogen etc.

N, P, K, Ca, S, Mg and oxygen content are the major variables, with Fe, Cl, Mn, B, Zn, Cu and Mo levels being desirable.

It's for scientifically growing plants hydroponically, so accurately measuring the ppm of each component of the water will be vital.

Build or buy?
Continuous or batch?
If batch, how often?

I don't have any instruments in mind but a few options come to mind:

=Take a sample to your municipal water works (or whatever it's called) for testing.
=Take a sample to a local agricultural school/college.
=I don't think the pool supply store is even an option but you never know..

Instrument-wise, maybe a LIBS rig would do? I'm thinking along the lines of boiling down a sample and firing the laser at the residue sitting on a nickel spatula or spoon. Never used one so I don't know if that's even possible.

aga - 20-8-2015 at 00:33

I'm looking to Buy rather than Build.

It will be used for testing batches of the plant irrigation water to check on the levels of the Nitrates, Phosphates etc. so they can be plotted over time along with the plant growth metrics.

Fulmen - 20-8-2015 at 00:46

What's your budget? You basically have to set up a full lab to cover all nutrients, this is not something you can jerry-rig for any reasonable cost.

Some can be measured with simple analyzers like these: http://www.specmeters.com/nutrient-management/nutrient-meter...

aga - 20-8-2015 at 07:18

Cool. Thanks Fulmen.

Those gadgets look like just the thing.

I'll probably be better off with stuff like that as i'd have a clue how to use them ...

FTIR/GC/NMR probably come with much bigger manuals.

battoussai114 - 20-8-2015 at 14:20

I'd guess an ion chromatograph and something else to detect dissolved oxygen... These chromatography equipment are probably pretty expensive, but afaic its the way to go for drink water analysis, so it should detect dissolved minerals.

Ozone - 20-8-2015 at 16:41

Yes. IC is the way to go for most of that. Na, NH4, K, Mg, Ca, Zn, etc. via cation IC (conductivity detector with a CS-12 cation column, 22mM methanesulfonic acid eluent or equivalent); the same instrument with an anion column (AS-11 or equivalent) and suppression will get chloride, bromide (-ates, too), carbonate, phosphate, sulfate, etc. and most of the organic acids (through aconitate) using a NaOH gradient.

The simple rig, say an old dionex DX-300 can be had pretty cheap on a popular auction site. But, still, this can be complicated and relatively expensive.

Because you know what you are mixing into your solution(s), perhaps a simple pH/conductivity meter (which can be correlated to total dissolved solids) might do in a pinch? You can also get ion-selective probes to go with it. A REDOX probe and DO meter might be useful, as well.

O3

Little_Ghost_again - 23-8-2015 at 11:18

Erm maybe an aquarium test kit? some do nearly 30 different tests and are cheap.............

aga - 23-8-2015 at 11:31

Yep. They seem to be the simplest/cheapest way to get a rough idea of what's in the water.

Test strips arrived for pH, total alkalinity (?), Hardness, Nitrates and Nitrites.

Amazingly i did the maths right and my nutrient solution is spot on !

Now to see if the plants like it.

Edit :

Hmm.

Tomato plants are not supposed to spontaneously ignite are they ?

Maybe a bit less Nitrate will work better next time.

[Edited on 23-8-2015 by aga]

Little_Ghost_again - 25-8-2015 at 12:28

http://www.petco.com/product/112561/NutraFin-Master-Aquarium...

Thats the best fresh water kit I have used, you can pick them up cheap if you shop around, I looked into the msd sheets to see if I could make my own kit. some of the reagents are expensive but if your doing many tests then you save a fortune! I will try and find the MSD sheet for the test kit above, some of the tests you can replicate with cheap chems

.

I got loads of info on hydroponics somewhere, exactly for tomatoes! alot of it was for cannabis but apparently cannabis, tomatoes and stinging nettles thrive on exactly the same conditions. I wanted it for tomatoes for the soap fragrance thing but found much more info on cannabis so used that instead. Forget the molasses nonsense etc it causes more agro than its worth. The trick is a subtle balance like in dutch aquarium, also look into CO2 water injection

/ Way way better than co2 around the leaves, bubble it into solution and drip solution at a ph controlled rate into main stream, there are charts online to figure the correct amount from your hardness starting point (ok you can snigger at that)

.
I found all the stuff I learned about dutch plant tanks transferred well to hydroponics, there is alot of bolloxs around about hydroponics. But carbonic acid added during daylight massively increases yield. funny though I cant remember any the cannabis stuff mentioning that but I know it works and use it myself .

dunno about tomatoes catching fire by themselves......... fuck everything I touch seems to ignite! I keep my yeast stuff in the polly tunnel

so I guess mine might one day

[Edited on 25-8-2015 by Little_Ghost_again]

aga - 25-8-2015 at 12:52

Experiments already under way.

The worst thing about plant experiments is waiting for them to grow.

It takes days !

Here's what the tests are for :-

The three buckets will harbour Vast tomato Universes, and the drainpipe will grow incalculable Tonnage of basil, mint and lettuce daily.

Or not.

We'll see.

The pipe next to the buckets is the drain, which flows into the resevoir at the bottom.

The tupperware-with-wires houses the arduino controller for the pumps.

Internet connected with control & data logging too. Woo !