ppm

While molarity is used for solutions with relatively large concentrations of solute, we use ppm and mg/L to denote much lower concentrations. This will often be the case when you are measuring solutes in water at a treatment plant, such as the concentration of iron in the water. We will discuss ppm in this section, then move on to mg/L in the next section. Parts per million, or ppm, is just what the name suggests - the number of parts of solute in one million parts of solution. Concentration in ppm is calculated using the following formula:

Let's consider a simple example: You add 11 mg of sulfuric acid to 2,000 grams of water. What is the resulting concentration of sulfuric acid, in ppm? In order to solve this problem, you first must make the units of the solute the same as the units of the solvent. So, you will convert from milligrams to grams:

Then you simply plug the numbers into the formula:

So, the concentration of sulfuric acid in the resultant solution is 5.5 ppm.

mg/L

Milligrams per liter, or mg/L, can be used to denote concentration in similar circumstances to ppm. The following formula is used to calculate concentration in mg/L:

As you can see, the primary difference between the two calculations is that ppm is a mass per mass calculation while mg/L is a mass per volume calculation. Due to the special characteristics of water, the concentration of an aqueous solution is the same when calculated in mg/L as it is when calculated in ppm. So, the 5.5 ppm sulfuric acid aqueous solution discussed in the last section has a concentration of 5.5 mg/L. Let's consider the following example problem: You dissolve 1 mg of salt in water to produce 2 liters of solution. What is the concentration of salt in the solution? You could choose to calculate the concentration as either ppm or mg/L, but mg/L is the better choice since you are given the amount of solution in liters. We would calculate the answer as follows:

You can state the concentration as either 0.5 mg/L or 0.5 ppm.

Percent
The final unit we use to measure concentration is percent. Percent concentration is calculated using the following formula:

Notice that I have given no units for the amounts of solute and solution. That is

because you can either calculate weight per weight (w/w) percent concentration or volume per volume (v/v) percent concentration. Since these two methods can give you different answers, you should always note which method you used. How does percent concentration relate to concentration in ppm? In order to figure out the answer, let's consider the same solution we considered in the section on ppm: An aqueous solution contains 0.011 g of sulfuric acid and 2,000 grams of water. The concentration was found to be 5.5 ppm. We would calculate the percent concentration as follows:

The w/w percent concentration is 0.00055%. You will notice that this is the same as the ppm concentration divided by 10,000. W/w concentrations always show this relationship to ppm concentrations since the calculations are identical except for multiplying by one hundred in percent concentration and by one million in ppm concentration. A concentration of 0.00055% is less understandable than a concentration of 5.5 ppm. As a result, percent concentration is usually used in situations more like that in which molarity is used, when the solute makes up a larger percentage of the solution.

Converting Between Types of Concentration

Next, you will be called on to convert between different types of concentration. For example, if you had a 35.7 ppm solution, what would this be in percent concentration? If you had a 0.2 M solution, could you convert this to mg/L? We've already mentioned a few conversion factors previously. In aqueous solutions, the following conversion factors are in effect: 1 mg/L = 1 ppm 1,000,000 ppm = 100% 1,000,000 mg/L = 100%

Converting to molarity is a little more complicated. You must use the following formula to convert from mg/L (or ppm) to molarity in an aqueous solution: