Water and Wastewater.com Help Forums - Celite 521 as a TSS Standard

paula

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Celite 521 as a TSS Standard
Jun 21^st, 2011, 11:34am

Hi,
I wanted to see if anyone has experience using Celite521 (diatomaceous earth) as a total suspended solids standard. I have made 5 batches of a 150 mg/L solution but our lab results are consistently lower than this (125-140 mg/L). I am wondering why there is a low bias. I am very careful with measuring and the Celite should not dissolve in the water. I did notice it seems to have a static charge (even after drying and desiccating) so it might be an issue of not being able to properly weigh it.

Also, we have not had issues with commercially prepared standards.

Lastly, if anyone uses anything else to prepare in-house TSS standards, I would appreciate info on that.

Thank you.

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Jeff Naumann God Member Offline I love Water and Wastewater.com Posts: 1133 Torrance, California Gender: Company or Organization: Jeff Naumann & Associates	Re: Celite 521 as a TSS Standard Reply #1 - Jun 21^st, 2011, 12:37pm I don't have direct experience in your question; but, is it possible that some of the DE is passing through the filter? You could do a "total solids" test on the filtrate. Assuming that all of the "standard" and washing waters are distilled the TDS of the filtrate should be nil.
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Victor YaBB Moderator Offline Escherichia coli Happens! Posts: 1269 Company or Organization: www.santacruzproductions.com	Re: Celite 521 as a TSS Standard Reply #2 - Jun 21^st, 2011, 1:48pm Cellulose Standard, 10,000 mg/L: Add 10 g of Whatman microganular CC41 Cellulose powder to 500 mL nanopure water. Bring suspension to 1 L. Make sure that you stir standard before withdrawing aliquot from bottle. Cellulose settles fast!
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Dedalus Full Member Offline Science is a business of empiricism. Posts: 238 NY Gender: Company or Organization: Dedalus Environmental	Re: Celite 521 as a TSS Standard Reply #3 - Jun 21^st, 2011, 3:20pm Why not use the solids standard that Environmental Express sells? The suspended solids are black, which is a nice touch.
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DavidH

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Re: Celite 521 as a TSS Standard
Reply #4 - Jun 22^nd, 2011, 10:21am

We use 10 mg/l of diatomaceous earth and we typically recover 9.5 to 10 mg on the filter. There are definitely issues with static electricty and DE. I would suggest not letting the DE come into contact with any plastics. We used to use plastic weighboats and the stuff would tend to fly off everywhere when transfered. Using weighpaper and only glassware has really improved our recoveries.
David

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MarkCR YaBB Newbies Offline Posts: 2 Company or Organization: City of CR	Re: Celite 521 as a TSS Standard Reply #5 - Jun 23^rd, 2011, 12:43pm We get ~89% recovery on average with diat. earth. It may be that some of the DE is smaller than the ~2um pore size of TSS filters. We run it as a LCS every day.
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