Is there a reagent that would detect urine in about 1/2 gallon of fresh water? Thanks so much for any help or guidance you could provide

i imagine that'd be hard thing to do. urine contains a mixture of compounds, most of which occur in nature elsewhere. It all depends on what quantity of urine you need to be able to detect in that half-gallon and what other impurities are likely to be present... what is the source of the freshwater?

Yeah, I'd go with just detecting one component, such as urea. You could measure the absorbance at a wavelength of light that urea absorbs. I'm sure there are chemicals that would react with urea, so you could detect it like that.

Yeah, I'd go with just detecting one component, such as urea. You could measure the absorbance at a wavelength of light that urea absorbs. I'm sure there are chemicals that would react with urea, so you could detect it like that.

 

The trouble with that is that urea exists in all sorts of places, and of course not only in human urine...

Thanks so much for replying to my message! If I needed to hire a chemist to help me with this problem, do you have any recommendations?

lol that's rather hard to answer. There are millions of chemists in the world and we don't know where you're expecting yours to do their work, plus we still really don't know what the application is for your detection setup.

 

Now if you want a guy to do simple chemistry in newfoundland at about 30 minutes a day and you're paying about $10,000 a week, then I'd reckon I know a man who can help.

There's a classic "spot test" using urease and detecting the ammonia produced by the pH change.

This sort of thing might work too.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4779897