Patent ID: 7906339

Claim:
A system for determining a chemical species, and the concentrations of said chemical species, present in an electrically conductive liquid analyte whose electrical conductivity is measurable as a function of its temperature, said system comprising: at least one electrical conductivity sensor and at least one temperature sensor in contact with an analyte of interest, said sensors in communication with a data acquisition system that measures the electrical conductivity and temperature of said analyte at a plurality of temperatures; a temperature control device adapted to vary the temperature of said analyte of interest while the electrical conductivity thereof is being measured by said data acquisition system; a data acquisition system adapted to transfer measured electrical conductivity and temperature data from said data acquisition system to a microprocessor-based device; and a program that, in combination with said microprocessor-based device, is adapted to: calculate electrical conductivity as a function of temperature given an ion composition of the analyte and given the concentrations and ionic conductance vs. temperature of the ions and the disassociation constants vs. temperature of an acid or base associated with each ion, compare measured electrical conductivity with calculated electrical conductivity at the plurality of temperatures, automatically vary the concentrations of the ions used in calculating electrical conductivity to minimize any difference between calculated electrical conductivity data and measured electrical conductivity data, and quantify the difference between calculated electrical conductivity data and measured electrical conductivity data to determine acceptability of the ion composition and the concentrations of the ions in the calculated data as the ions and concentrations of said ions in the analyte.