EXPERIMENT 6

DISSOLVED OXYGEN LEVELS IN NATURAL WATERS

Group Number 3 CM011L – A8

Bawar, Shemariah Gwen T.
CESE – 1 April 24, 2019
REPORT

Water is an essential need for us human. In this experiment, we are asked to develop a
proper technique for obtaining a natural water sample, to determine the dissolved oxygen
concentration of a natural water sample, to learn the chemical reactions involved in fixing and
analyzing a water sample for dissolved oxygen using the Winkler method. The concentration of
dissolved oxygen in a water sample is an important indicator of water quality.

In the experiment, we are asked to collect the water sample but here are some possible
errors that we may have encounter. When the water chemist waits until returning to the laboratory
to fix the water sample for the dissolved oxygen analysis. The reported dissolved oxygen
concentration will remain unchanged because time won’t have too much effect to the water sample
unless it is open and exposed. There is one procedure that we added an an approximate volume
(~1 mL) solution of MnSO4 to fix the dissolved oxygen in the collected sample. The meaning of
‘fix the dissolved oxygen’ is that there are no more reasons that could change the dissolved oxygen
concentration because the oxygen would quickly react to the other chemicals present in the water
and an exact volume is not critical because MnSO4 was measured in a pipette and needed to spread
in the water sample. If no precipitate forms and assuming that the reagents were properly prepared
and dispensed into the sample, the water sample has fewer oxygen because there will be no
precipitate that will react in titration and the volume of the titrant used more oxygen present.
Sometimes a wrong measurement of temperature like recording 27°C rather than the actual value
of 21°C could be error because these would make the dissolved oxygen concentration to be lower
because the higher temperature, the molecules would move faster, and the oxygen concentration
would be lower than it should be. In analyzing the sample, if the color of the analyte did not fade
to form the light yellow-brown color but remained intense even after the addition of a full burette
of the S2O32– titrant, even though a precipitate formed in Part B.4. This means that more titrant
should be needed to balance the solution since there are too many oxygen in the sample.

Assuming a dissolved oxygen concentration of 7.0 ppm (mg/L) in a 200-mL water sample,
1.75 × 10−4 moles of Mn (OH)3 will be produced with the addition of the MnSO4 solution. The
4mol Mn(OH)3
solution for these 4.375 × 10−5 mol O2 × . 8.75 × 10−5 moles of I3– will be
1mol O2

produced when the KI-NaN3 solution is added to the above solution. The solution for this result is
1mol I3−
1.75 × 10−4 mol Mn(OH)3 × 2mol Mn(OH) . 5.83 × 10−5 moles of S2O32– will be needed to react
3
 2mol S2 O3 2−
with the I3– that is generated. The solution for this result is 8.75 × 10−5 mol I3− × .7
3mol I3−

mL of 𝑺𝟐 𝑶𝟑 𝟐− will be used if the concentration of the S2O32– titrant to be 0.025 M.

If I was asked to determine why there was a fish kill in the nearby lake from that water
sample. Applying the concept from the experiment, I will say that the lake had less dissolved
oxygen, the fish would die because of suffocation and there could also be a chance that the
dissolved oxygen reacted to the other elements from the environment. If a fish died which is found
near the discharge point of water from cooling waters at electrical generating power plants. There
is low dissolved oxygen in that water since warm water holds less dissolved oxygen. If fishes died
which are found in streams following heavy rainfall in a watershed dominated by farmland or
denuded forestland. This could mean that the pressure from a strong current could cause it or
dissolved oxygen from that water could be poisonous since the water came from a farmland or
denuded forest. Water from river contains more dissolved oxygen since some of it came from
groundwater which contains a lot of dissolved oxygen and this water runs off into ocean it will
have less dissolved oxygen since salt water have lower dissolved oxygen concentration than fresh
water because it contains at least 3% salt.

CONCLUSION

From this experiment, we can conclude that using the Winkler method we can identify the
dissolved oxygen in mg/L from a water sample. a warm water fish could survive from a water
which contains 5 mg/L of dissolved oxygen we compare that our data which shows that our water
sample have an average of 4.40 mg/L have a close value from warm water that a fish could live.
This prove that Winkler method is accurate in measuring the dissolved oxygen in water. We also
conclude that the temperature of water also affects the dissolved oxygen, the higher the
temperature the lower the dissolved oxygen and vice versa.