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Artificial seawater



Artificial seawater (or ASW) is a mixture of dissolved mineral salts (and sometimes vitamins) that simulates seawater. Artificial seawater is primarily used in marine biology and marine aquaria, and allows the easy preparation of media appropriate for marine organisms (including algae, bacteria, plants and animals). From a scientific perspective, artificial seawater has the advantage of reproducibility over natural seawater.

Example

The tables below present an example of an artificial seawater preparation devised by Kester, Duedall, Connors and Pytkowicz (1967)[1]. The recipe consists of two lists of mineral salts, the first of anhydrous salts that can be weighed out, the second of hydrous salts that should be added to the artificial seawater as a solution.

Gravimetric salts
Salt Molecular weight g kg-1 solution
Sodium chloride (NaCl) 58.44 23.926
Sodium sulfate (Na2SO4) 142.04 4.008
Potassium chloride (KCl) 74.56 0.667
Sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) 84.00 0.196
Potassium bromide (KBr) 119.01 0.098
Boric acid (H3BO3) 61.83 0.026
Sodium fluoride (NaF) 41.99 0.003
Volumetric salts
Salt Molecular weight mol kg-1 solution
Magnesium chloride (MgCl2.6H2O) 203.33 0.05327
Calcium chloride (CaCl2.2H20) 147.03 0.01033
Strontium chloride (SrCl2.6H2O) 266.64 0.00009

While all of the compounds listed in the recipe above are inorganic, mineral salts, some artificial seawater recipes, such as Goldman and McCarthy (1978)[2], make use of trace solutions of vitamins or organic compounds.

References

  1. ^ Kester, D. R., Duedall, I. W., Connors, D. N. and Pytkowicz, R. M. (1967). Preparation of Artificial Seawater. Limnology & Oceanography 12, 176—179.
  2. ^ Goldman, J. C. and McCarthy, J. J. (1978). Steady-state growth and ammonium uptake of a fast-growing marine diatom. Limnology & Oceanography 23, 695–703.

See also

 
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Artificial_seawater". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia.
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