Organic complexes with clay minerals cations

Humic acids are soluble in weak alkaline solutions and are essentially insoluble in water and mineral acids. They may be precipitated from solution by the action of mineral acids and bivalent or trivalent cations, however, they are fairly resistant to the acid hydrolysis. They are dark spherocol-loids with a cross-linked structure which plays a part in their high sorption capacity. They exhibit different degrees of a tendency to aggregation and very different degrees of dispersion. In comparison with other types of natural organic substances, the humic acids are characterized by their extraordinary stability in the soil. This stability is due to their ability to form organomineraJ complexes, particularly with clay minerals and with aluminium and iron hydroxides. 

In the case of neutral NACs two types of adsorption mechanisms have been found to play a predominant role in most of the subsurface sediments (i) partitioning into the organic fraction of the sediment (43, 59, 70) and (ii) adsorption due to complex formation with clay mineral surfaces that bear exchangeable NHJ or K cations. This type of interaction has been postulated as an electron donor-acceptor (EDA) complex where oxygen atoms at the siloxane surfaces of clay minerals act as electron donors and NACs act as electron... 

Clay minerals or phyllosilicates are lamellar natural and synthetic materials with high surface area, cation exchange and swelling properties, exfoliation ability, variable surface charge density and hydrophobic/hydrophilic character [85], They are good host structures for intercalation or adsorption of organic molecules and macromolecules, particularly proteins. On the basis of the natural adsorption of proteins by clay minerals and various clay complexes that occurs in soils, many authors have investigated the use of clay and clay-derived materials as matrices for the immobilization of enzymes, either for environmental chemistry purpose or in the chemical and material industries. 

Clay minerals and clay colloids are the products of the advanced weathering of primary silicates. They are comprised mainly of silica and alumina, often with appreciable amounts of alkali and alkaline earth metals and iron. Most also have varying amounts of water bound to their surfaces and can take on a variety of different chemical and physical properties depending on the amount of water adsorbed. They have the ability to exchange or bind cations and anions and are capable of complex formation with a wide variety of organic molecules. 

Arsenic is ubiquitous in nature and is found in detectable concentrations in all environmental matrices. The occurrence of As in the continental crust of Earth is usually given as 1.5 to 2.0 mg/1. The distribution of arsenic in nature is extremely variable, showing little correlation with geological formation, climate, or soil. Numerous minerals, rocks, sediments and soils contain arsenic partly as constituent of sulfide minerals or complex sulfides of metal cations and partly as a constituent retained by soils and/or sediments in occluded or adsorbed forms. The latter is manifested primarily by the adsorption or occlusion of As on hydrous A1 and Fe oxides, but these are not necessarily the only source. Arsenic is also adsorbed on clay colloid, is bound to organic matter and may form slightly water soluble compounds with Al, Fe, Ca and Mg in the soil matrix. Some of the more common minerals in soils are arsenopyrite (FeAsS), Orpiment (AsgSg) etc. 

The radioactive chromium (51Cr) found in Columbia River sediments contaminated with effluent from a nuclear reactor facility was not released by the major cations of sea water or by 0.05 M CuS0424 . The results of previous work in this laboratory (New England Aquarium) showed that of the silver(I) and cadmium(II) adsorbed on the clay minerals kaolin and montmorillonite, in essentially deionized water, less than half was desorbed on mixing with sea water25 . One may postulate from results such as these that most of the heavy metals occluded within a complex organic... 

Microbial availability of organic matter for decomposition can be limited by organomineral interactions such as adsorption onto clay particles or complexation with polyvalent cations (Oades et al, 1988 Sollins et al, 1996). The incorporation of cationic amides into interlayers of clay minerals (Huang and Schnitzer,... 

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