ULTRAVIOLET MULTIWAVELENGTH ABSORPTIOMETRY (UVMA) FOR THE EXAMINATION OF NATURAL-WATERS AND WASTEWATERS .1. GENERAL-CONSIDERATIONS

The use of ultraviolet spectrophotometry for water quality monitoring is not very successful because of interferences from suspended or organic matters. A UV multiwavelength absorptiometry (UVMA) method is proposed to cancel the background signal and simultaneously compute the concentrations of specific absorbing components which significantly disturb the typical shape of the spectrum. This paper presents the theoretical aspect of this method which can be directly used with a computer-assisted UV spectrophotometer. Some applications are cited and will be described in later papers of this series. © 1990 Springer-Verlag.