Hemmes ELECTRIC FIELD METHODS

Another chemical relaxation method that can be used to determine the kinetics of fast reactions on soil constituents is the electric field pulse technique. This technique was developed by Hachiya et al. (1980) to study the kinetics of I03 adsorption and desorption on Ti02 and by Sasaki et al. (1983) to investigate ion-pair formation on the surface of a-FeOOH. Excellent review articles on electric field methods are found in DeMaeyer (1969), Hemmes (1979), and Eyring and Hemmes (1986). 

Hemmes, P. (1979). Electric field methods. In Techniques and Applications of Fast Reactions in Solutions (W. J. Gettins and E. Wyn-Jones, eds.), Vol. 50, pp. 95-101. Reidel Publ., Dordrecht, The Netherlands. 

One can easily produce strong electric fields (30 kV/cm < E < 100 kV/cm) between metal electrodes by spacing them about 1 cm apart in a liquid. Such a pulsed field can result in reaction perturbation of an equilibrium in the liquid. Following the perturbation, a variety of methods can be utilized to determine the reaction kinetics (Eyring and Hemmes, 1986). 

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