Portable device for on-site detection of ammonia nitrogen

Portable measurement of ammonia nitrogen in water is of great significance for water quality monitoring. It’s beneficial to reduce biological diseases and promote aquatic product safety. Traditional methods such as Nessler’s reagent method suffer from complex operation, time delays and toxic residues. To realize simple and pollution-free detection, this paper develops a low-cost portable device for ammonia nitrogen detection. A test paper was proposed to cooperate the device and offer a chromogenic reaction. The portable device reduces the impact of any ambient light, simplifies the operation, and provides human–computer interaction. The result obtained for the detection range of 0.4–10 mg/L (R² are 0.990 2 and 0.989 3 for the rang of 0.4–4.5 and 4.5–10 mg/L, respectively) with the detection limit of 0.36 mg/L, and the average recovery of aquaculture water is 100.98–137.75%. The results show that the portable device can provide a great potential for on-site detection ammonia nitrogen concentration.