Im not intending to beat this poor dead dog anymore but I received 2 replies from Chemetrics and wanted to share them with all of you that have been halping me.
"I have asked my supervisor to look into your question. We know our Total Hardness Test kit works with seawater, and we believed that the Calcium Hardness test did as well, but our R & D dept. is investigating this and checking the reference method as well. I'll send you an email asap.
Thanks,
Carla "
Then the supervisors email..............
"Carla has forwarded your questions to me regarding analysis of seawater with our total alkalinity, total hardness, and calcium hardness test kits.
Method references for the total alkalinity test kits indicate that the chemistry employed is applicable to the analysis of all types of water, including saline waters. By definition, the alkalinity of a water is its acid-neutralizing capacity. Since the chemistry involved with our test kits is a standard and simple titration of the sample with an acid to the designated endpoint of 4.5, we strongly believe that our kits are applicable for seawater analysis. We have not demonstrated this experimentally.
Method references for the total hardness test kits specify that the chemistry is applicable to saline waters, so we believe that the chemistry is applicable to seawater analysis. However, we have not demonstrated this experimentally.
A few years ago, CHEMetrics' R&D Department experimented with our calcium hardness test kits with seawater samples. We determined that natural seawater measured 1000 ppm as CaCO3 with our K-1710, even when the pH of the seawater was adjusted down to approximately 2. At the time, we were using natural seawater rather than a commercially available synthetic seawater, and we did not know its exact calcium concentration. However, based on various information sources, we know that the approximate concentration of calcium in "average" seawater is 400-416 ppm as Ca, or 1000-1040 ppm as CaCO3. The results that we obtained for the natural seawater certainly agree with this average. We have not analyzed synthetic seawater with this chemistry.
Unfortunately, our R&D Department will not be able to experiment in the near future with these three chemistries using synthetic seawater in order to confirm our opinions. In case you are willing to experiment yourself, and since you have already purchased one of each of our total hardness, calcium hardness, and total alkalinity test kits, I would like to recommend that you purchase a synthetic standard seawater (Ricca catalog No. 8363) from Ricca Chemical Company (888-467-4222,
www.riccachemical.com). Ricca will be able to tell you the calcium and magnesium concentration of the solution so that you can confirm that CHEMetrics' total and calcium hardness test kits will provide accurate results. They may also be able to tell you the total alkalinity of the solution so that you can confirm that our alkalinity test is also appropriate. If not, CHEMetrics may be able to calculate the expected alkalinity of the standard based on the concentration of its various components.
Finally, I have reviewed the Complexometry with EDTA and Related Reagents and did not find any information that would cause me to assume that the calcium kit chemistry is not applicable for seawater. Can you tell me exactly what you read that led you to this conclusion?
I'm sorry I couldn't provide a definitive response to your questions but hope that this information is helpful."
They are asking me to validate their test kits!! I got saliferts on the way.........