Automatic buffer capacity model building for the purpose of water quality monitoring

Abstract

In this paper, buffer capacity profiles are used in the framework of automatic monitoring of water quality. The aim of the proposed methodology is to automatically and stepwise build buffer capacity models for each particular titrated sample, and to quantify the individual buffer systems that constitute the total buffer capacity. An automatic and robust model building algorithm has been developed and applied to many titration curves of effluent and river water samples. It is illustrated that the application of automatically built buffer capacity models mostly results in similar or better estimations of ammonium and ortho-phosphate in the samples compared to a priori fixed buffer capacity models. The automatic modelling approach is also advantageous for alarm generating purposes on e.g. river waters, because unexpected buffers are easily detected.