Soil & Water Res., 2015, 10(3):172-180 | DOI: 10.17221/256/2014-SWR

Study of interactions between relevant organic acids and aluminium in model solutions using HPLC and ICOriginal Paper

Ondřej DRÁBEK¹, Isaac KIPKOECH KIPLAGAT¹, Michael KOMÁREK², Václav TEJNECKݹ, Luboš BORŮVKA¹

¹ Department of Soil Science and Soil Protection, Faculty of Agrobiology, Food and Natural Resources, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Prague, Czech Republic;

² Department of Environmental Geosciences, Faculty of Environmental Sciences, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

The interactions of different organic acids such as citric, malic, oxalic, and fulvic with aluminium were studied using ion-exchange chromatography (IC) and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The experiments were carried out at low pH (1.5-3.1). The results of IC experiments on the interaction between Al and oxalate, citrate, and malate were compared with model chemical equilibrium calculations. The strongest effect on Al speciation was observed with oxalic acid and fulvic acid. These two ligands formed more than one type of complex with Al. In contrast, there was no significant effect of malic acid on Al speciation and a rather weak effect caused by citric acid. The studies show that the formed complexes are stable even at low pH.

Keywords: aluminium speciation; citric acid; fulvic acid; malic acid; oxalic acid

Published: September 30, 2015  Show citation