Abstract
A fluorescence analysis method, which focuses on the fluorescence intensity of fulvic-like organic matter measured at λex320nm/λem430nm, was applied to evaluate the characteristics of dissolved organic matter (DOM) in environmental waters. The duplicated analyses of a clean river water sample showed that this method was more sensitive by one order of magnitude than TOC and UV260 methods in the DOC measurement. From the results of its application to spring waters in Saitama prefecture, the method was proved to be effective for the evaluation of water purity in terms of DOC. Moreover, fluorescence excitation-emission matrix spectroscopy (EEMs) was also proved to be effective for the discrimination of spring waters which had unusual DOM compositions. From the results of its application to water samples obtained from various rivers in Japan, it was concluded that the fluorescence excitation spectrometric analysis, which is a modification of our original method with three wavelengths, is effective for the removal of the influence of the fluorescence emitted by fluorescent whitening agents (FWAs) in treated domestic wastewater and gray water. Moreover, the fluorescence intensity at λex320nm/λem430nm showed a very strong positive correlation with DOC.
