Concentration is a measure of the amount of a particular dissolved substance per unit volume of water. For example, one might say that the concentration of bicarbonate (a dissolved constituent) in water is 140 milligrams per liter. Any dissolved constituent (solute) can be characterized by measuring and reporting its concentration.
Actually, the concentration of a substance in water can be measured in various ways. Most often, concentration is expressed in the units of milligrams per liter (mg/L) or parts per million (ppm). Also relatively common is the unit milliequivalents per liter (meq/L), used mainly for electrochemical calculations. It will be described more fully later, in the tutorial on fundamentals of water chemistry.
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