Reverse flow injection analysis of nanomolar soluble reactive phosphorus in seawater with a long path length liquid waveguide capillary cell and spectrophotometric detection

A novel reverse flow injection analysis method coupled with a liquid waveguide capillary cell (LWCC) and spectrophotometric detection for the determination of nanomolar soluble reactive phosphorus in seawater was established. Reagent was injected into the sample stream and detected in a 2-m path length LWCC with detection wavelength set at 710 nm. Experimental parameters, including the reagent concentration, the injection volume, the flow rate and the length of the mixing coil, were optimized based on univariate experimental design. The interference of silicate and arsenate were also investigated. Under optimized conditions, the linearity and the detection limit of the proposed method were found to be 0–165.0 nM and 0.5 nM, which was estimated to be three times the standard deviation of the measurement blanks (n = 9). The relative standard deviations for the determination of 24.7 and 82.5 nM samples were 1.54% and 1.86% (n = 9), respectively. Three seawater samples were analyzed with recoveries ranging from 87.8% to 101.8%. Using the Student's t-test at the 95% confidence level, the results of the proposed method and a segmented flow analyzer reference method for determination of the two samples showed no significant difference. The proposed method had the advantages of being less reagent consuming, more sensitive and with higher throughput (15 h−1).