Use of electronic spreadsheets, based on ISO standards and IUPAC guidelines, for assessing the quality of water analytical curves

Abstract

This paper describes the development and validation of the electronic spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel® software for evaluating the analytical quality of calibration graphs of linear and homoscedastic functions, used in water physical-chemical analysis by UV-Vis spectrophotometry, and obtained according to ISO standards and IUPAC guidelines. By introducing the absorbance data, the spreadsheet shows the calibration (with respective function) and the residues graphs, and also computes the residual standard deviation, angular coefficient standard deviation, interception standard deviation, and coefficient of determination R2. On prediction terms, the spreadsheets calculate (confidence level at 95 %): the prediction interval (showing the respective curve with upper and lower limits), the absorbance critical value, the concentration critical value (xC), the minimum detectable value of concentration (xD) or detection limit, the quantification limit, and the confidence intervals for samples. From the initial spreadsheet, simplifications were introduced and the new spreadsheets were used for analyzing nitrate, nitrite and iron. The effect of the simplifications on the parameters calculation, and the correlations between xC/xD ISO 11843-1,2 parameters and the CCα(decision limit)/CCβ(detection capability) European Commission parameters, were discussed.Keywords. analytical quality control, analytical curves, water analysis, electronic spreadsheets.