Isothermal distillation in flow injection analysis: Determination of total nitrogen in plant material

An isothermal distillation unit is incorporated in flow injection systems. The influence of surfactant, flow rates, alkalinity, ionic strength, collector stream pH, reagent concentration and sample volume in ammonia distillation are discussed. A method for the determination of total nitgrogen in plant digests employing Nessler reagent is proposed. This method, based on merging zones approach, is characterized by a sampling rate of 100 samples per hour, a precision better than 3%, a reagent consumption of only 100 μl per sample and virtually no base-line drift. The results agree with those obtained with the indophenol blue colorimetric method. The incorporation of isothermal distillation in flow systems with potentiometric measurement is also described.