How does parts per million

Home Contact Us. About St. Helens History of St. Helens St. Helens - Facebook Follow St. Helens - Twitter Follow St. Understanding 'Parts Per Million'. What is a part per million, a part per billion, or even a part per trillion? One part per billion , or ppb, would be equal to adding ONE drop of water to a 10, gallon swimming pool. Please notice the picture of a Junior size Olympic pool at the beginning of this article. The Junior size Olympic pool holds approximately , gallons of water.

Still using our eyedropper, a single drip from our eyedropper of water into the volume of water held in 35 of these Junior size Olympic pools, or 10,, gallons that is ten million gallons is extremely close to being a part per trillion! Another way to try and see this in your minds eye, if you were to take a single grain of granulated sugar and drop that single grain of sugar into the volume of water contained in 35 of these Junior sized Olympic pools, that is one part per trillion!

Another very important point to remember about that single grain of sugar, as with the drips of water, would dissolve and would be dispersed into the entire body of 10,, gallons, just as the single water drop becomes part of the entire volume of these pools. The Filtration Process Housed inside the St. And How About those Microns? Coli 0. I hope I did not lose you along the way. Any questions, suggestions or comments? Please feel free to send me an e mail. Phone: Return to the St. Drinking Water Filtration Facility.

City of St Helens Water Quality and Distribution system data What does parts per million, part per billion or parts per trillion mean? What is a Ranney collector well? Why is there Chlorine in my Drinking Water? Mathematically, 1 PPM can be expressed as following:. Subscribe to the Safeopedia newsletter to stay on top of current industry trends and up-to-date know-how from subject matter authorities.

Our comprehensive online resources are dedicated to safety professionals and decision makers like you. By: Daniel Clark. By: Tamara Parris CD. Dictionary Dictionary Term of the Day. Sustained Yield. Safeopedia Terms. Meet the Author with Robert J. De Boer. So, a 1 part per million 1 ppm solution would be 1 kg of solute per 1 million kilograms of solution. And these masses are just too large to be useful in Chemistry laboratory.

But we can divide the masses of solute and solution by 1 million to arrive at more useful units:. So, a 1 part per million 1 ppm solution would be 1 kg of solute per 1 million litres of solution. And this mass and volume are just too large to be useful in Chemistry laboratory. But we can divide the mass of solute and volume of solution by 1 million to arrive at more useful units:.

If we divide the mass of solute and volume of solution by 1 , we arrive at. To calculate the concentration of a solution in parts per million using the mass of solute and the volume or mass of solution :.

You should practice rearranging the equations above in order to find mass of solute, volume of solution or mass of solution:.