• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.235-242
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• 2006

The precise estimation of total and organic carbon contents in sediments is fundamental to understand the benthic environment. To test the precision and accuracy of CHN analyzer and the procedure to quantify total and organic carbon contents(using in-situ acidification with sulfurous acid($H_2SO_3$)) in the sediment, the reference material s such as Acetanilide($C_8H_9NO$), Sulfanilammide($C_6H_8N_2O_2S$), and BCSS-1(standard estuary sediment) were used. The results indicate that CHN analyzer to quantify carbon and nitrogen content has high precision(percent error=3.29%) and accuracy(relative standard deviation=1.26%). Additionally, we conducted the instrumental comparison of carbon values analyzed using CHN analyzer and Coulometeric Carbon Analyzer. Total carbon contents measured from two different instruments were highly correlated($R^2=0.9993$, n=84, p<0.0001) with a linear relationship and show no significant differences(paired t-test, p=0.0003). The organic carbon contents from two instruments also showed the similar results with a significant linear relationship($R^2=0.8867$, n=84, p<0.0001) and no significant differences(paired t-test, p<0.0001). Although it is possible to overestimate organic carbon contents for some sediment types having high inorganic carbon contents(such as calcareous ooze) due to procedural and analytical errors, analysis of organic carbon contents in sediments using CHN Analyzer and current procedures seems to provide the best estimates. Therefore, we recommend that this method can be applied to measure the carbon content in normal any sediment samples and are considered to be one of the best procedure far routine analysis of total and organic carbon.