A Method for the Automatic Determination of the Nitrate Content of Tobacco / Eine Methode zur automatischen Nitratbestimmung im Tabak

The method for determining nitrate in the form of a perrhenate complex has been modified for the purpose of automatically determining nitrate contained in tobacco with the Technicon Autoanalyser. The modified method makes it possible to determine automatically nitrate contents of aqueous tobacco extracts ranging from 0.03 % to the maximum amounts usually occurring in tobacco. The procedure described is suitable for the analysis of thirty tobacco samples per hour. The results correspond with those furnished by other manual techniques. The analytical data obtained by application of this method of analysis differ from those resulting from the photometric method using 3,4-dimethylphenol (Maastricht) by, on an average, less than 0.01 % nitrate. The coefficient of variation of this method is, with measurements from a homogeneous extract as well as from various amount weights of one tobacco sample, 2.5 %.