Lanthanide Ion Probe Spectroscopy for Metal Ion Speciation

Abstract

The majority of the organic materials in waters and soils are humic substances, which are polyfunctional, acidic, macromolecular compounds, that are produced by the biodegradation of biomass. The model is developed further by including the inherent competition effects of protons. While proton binding can be studied in the absence of competitive metal binding in metal-free solutions, it is obvious that metal complexation must inevitably be studied in competition with proton binding. The current objective of this project is to functionally characterize interaction between any metal ion N and any humic sample, using a single probe metal ion M, in a three-cation multiligand system, i.e. M, H, and N. A three-cation multiligand interaction system is described by putting an additional metal ion N into the model. A series of computer simulation studies were then performed to predict and describe the behavior of various spectral titration plots generated from different complex multiligand equilibria.