By Oxana Fox | Updated March 24, 2022
Water commonly contains dissolved solids—mainly inorganic salts—whose concentration is often expressed as a weight percentage. This metric is essential for evaluating water hardness, assessing wastewater composition, and monitoring industrial effluents.
Sum the masses of every solid present in the solution. For instance, a mixture containing 5 g of sodium chloride and 12 g of potassium sulfate has 5 + 12 = 17 g of dissolved solids.
Combine the solids’ mass with that of the solvent to obtain the total mass of the solution. Using the example above with 150 g of water, the total mass is 17 g + 150 g = 167 g.
Divide the solids’ mass by the total solution mass and multiply by 100 to express the result as a percentage: (17 / 167) × 100 = 10.18 %.
