How I successfully completed my research project work by @adylinah / 30% payout to @steemingcuration

Greeting to y'all steemians, hope you all are doing just fine. I'm here to share how my research project work went and also the experience gotten from it. My research topic is; The Determination of Dissolved Organic Nitrogen from Bacteria. For this analysis, I used sediment (mud) sample from six different stations. During the field cruises around the estuaries, I actually checked some physiochemical parameters at the study site like the pH, turbidity and salinity. Below are the photos of the sample collection using sediment grab, salinity measurement using refractometer, GPS for location, pH of the stations using pH indicator paper and also the water transparency (turbidity) using sechi desk.

There is no method to measure DON directly; however, it can be determined using a nitrogen mass balance equation. Dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) species and Total Dissolved Nitrogen (TDN) must be determined to calculate DON concentration in a sample. Measuring the Total Kjeldahl Nitrogen (TKN) and dissolved ammonia nitrogen (DNH3-N) is another way for determining DON. Dissolved Organic Nitrogen is the difference between TKN and DNH3-N (Equation 1).

DON (mg N/L) = TKN – DNH3-N (1)
I actually used the Kjeldahl method to determine the Dissolved Organic Nitrogen. Kjeldahl method involves three processes such as digestion, distillation and titration process.

EQUIPMENTS USED

• Weighing balance
• Volumetric flask
• Conical flask
• Spatula
• Heating mantle
• Beaker
• Distillation apparatus
• Titration set up
• Burette
• Pipette and
• Funnel

PREPARATION OF SOLUTION AND THE REAGENTS USED

• Borate buffer was prepared with 88 ml 0.1 NaOH to 500 ml of 0.025 M sodium tetra borate (4.78 g) and was diluted to 500 ml of distilled water.
• 0.1 N Na OH
• 6 N Na OH (240 g/l)
• Mixed indicator: 0.2 g methyl red / 100 ml 95 % ethanol and 0.1 g methylene blue / 50 ml 95 % ethanol were combined to give borate indicating solution.
• Indicating Boric acid: 20 g of boric acid was dissolved in distilled water, 10 ml indicator was added and diluted to 1 litre with water.
• 0.02 N (001 M): 20 ml 1N was diluted to 1 litre.
• 1 N H2SO4 : 28 ml concentrated H2SO4 was diluted to 1 litre.

PROCESSES INVOLVED IN KJELDAHL METHOD

Digestion process

This is the first step involve in this analysis.
1 g of sediment sample was weighed into 250 ml beaker
20 ml of concentrated H2SO4 was added

1. 7 g of K2SO4 (5.5 g Na2 SO4) and 0.345 g CuSO4
   The sample was boiled for 1 hour using LABCONCO® 6001 for digestion.

Distillation process

This is the second step in this method.
120 ml of distilled water was added to the digestion beaker
100 ml of 6 N Na OH was added to pH 10 /11
25 ml of borate buffer was added to each sample .
The solution was then poured into the Kjeldhal flask and distilled into 50 ml boric acid indicating solution.

The water from the heating mantle is used to generate steam in order to release ammonia. When this ammonia is being trapped into the boric acid indicating solution, I observed that the blue color indicator changes to green. The sample was distilled up to 200 ml

Titration process

Titration was done using 0. 01 M H2SO4 to color change (from green to purple).

Below is the result gotten after titration;

The result shows that there is an increase in the concentration of Dissolved Organic Nitrogen from station 1 to 4 and the it slowly decrease in station 5 and 6. This is due to the environmental condition, the activities and also the high rate of bacteria that utilize this dissolved organic nitrogen.

CONCLUSION

Being able to complete my research work gives me nothing but great joy. Although, at some point it was a little bit frustrating and tiring which I used three days in completing but I'm happy and proud that I could run my analysis successfully. This great experience really mold me to be strong and also strengthen more of my interest in science.