Evaluation of NaOH leaching techniques to extract humic acids from palaeosols

Abstract

It can be shown quite conclusively that the often used technique (AAA) of leaching palaeosol samples with hot or boiling dilute HCl solution, followed by treatment with up to 2% NaOH solution and a further treatment with dilute HCl solution may not remove all of the so-called humic acids from palaeosol samples. In fact, in many cases it does not remove any of the humic acids, only carbohydrates, amino acids and other organic compounds. This can be shown by examination of the visible spectrum (400–700 nm) of the “humic acid” extract in alkaline solution. Hence, many of the reported 14C results from the “humin” fraction of palaeosols are actually from the humic acid fraction which is tightly bound to the clay component of the palaeosol. The NaOH leach also has the potential to introduce carboxylic acid groups from atmospheric CO 2 into phenol groups. A reevaluation of humic acid extracts of palaeosols collected from the Loess Plateau in China has been made, with analyses comparing the properties of the various organic extracts. Also, an extraction technique based on recommendations from the International Humic Substances Society, incorporating removal of impurities by chromatography plus a decarboxylation step is proposed.