• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.111-124
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• 2003

Processes that cause immobilization of contaminants in soil are of great environmental importance because they may lead to a considerable reduction in the bioavailability of contaminants and they may restrict their leaching into groundwater. Previous investigations demonstrated that pollutants can be bound to soil constituents by either chemical or physical interactions. From an environmental point of view, chemical interactions are preferred, because they frequently lead to the formation of strong covalent bonds that are difficult to disrupt by microbial activity or chemical treatments. Humic substances resulting from lignin decomposition appear to be the major binding ligands involved in the incorporation of contaminants into the soil matrix through stable chemical linkages. Chemical bonds may be formed through oxidative coupling reactions catalyzed either biologically by polyphenol oxidases and peroxidases, or abiotically by certain clays and metal oxides. These naturally occurring processes are believed to result in the detoxification of contaminants. While indigenous enzymes are usually not likely to provide satisfactory decontamination of polluted sites, amending soil with enzymes derived from specific microbial cultures or plant materials may enhance incorporation processes. The catalytic effect of enzymes was evaluated by determining the extent of contaminants binding to humic material, and - whenever possible - by structural analyses of the resulting complexes. Previous research on xenobiotic immobilization was mostly based on the application of $^{14}$ C-labeled contaminants and radiocounting. Several recent studies demonstrated, however, that the evaluation of binding can be better achieved by applying $^{13}$ C-, $^{15}$ N- or $^{19}$ F-labeled xenobiotics in combination with $^{13}$ C-, $^{15}$ N- or $^{19}$ F-NMR spectroscopy. The rationale behind the NMR approach was that any binding-related modification in the initial arrangement of the labeled atoms automatically induced changes in the position of the corresponding signals in the NMR spectra. The delocalization of the signals exhibited a high degree of specificity, indicating whether or not covalent binding had occurred and, if so, what type of covalent bond had been formed. The results obtained confirmed the view that binding of contaminants to soil organic matter has important environmental consequences. In particular, now it is more evident than ever that as a result of binding, (a) the amount of contaminants available to interact with the biota is reduced; (b) the complexed products are less toxic than their parent compounds; and (c) groundwater pollution is reduced because of restricted contaminant mobility.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.37-42
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• 1993

Influences of metal concentration, pH and temperature on metal-ligand precipitate formation were investigated, as a part of projects for removing heavy metals from aqueous solution employing the principles in metal-ligand complexation. Aqueous solutions of HA or FA were reacted with those of heavy metals with 1:1 ratio. Efficiency of humic (HA) or fulvic acid (FA) on removing metals was evaluated by separating the precipitates from soltuions with the filtering method. When HA was a counter ligand, there existed three ranges of metal concentrations affecting precipitation : precipitate fromation was not available, was reached to the maximum, and afterwards was decreased again. The concentration ratios of metal to HA for initiating complexation were dependent upon kinds of metal and concentrations of ligand. Amount of Pb to form maximum precipitates per unit mg of HA was 1.3 times higher than that of Cu. When FA was a counter ligand, concentrations of metal-FA precipitates were increased proportionally with the treated metal concentrations. Efficiency of FA fro removing Pb was nearly 100%, but it was ranged from 12 to 19% for Cu, depending on FA concentration. pH exerted a considerable effect on complexation between Pb and FA, showing precipitates were increased six times at most per unit increase of pH. Ranges of pH increasing significantly the mounts of precipitates were coincied with pH jump ranges of the titration curve of organic ligands. As increasing temperature from 15 to $55^{\circ}C$, increases of FA-Cu precipitates were doubled, but those of FA-Pb were accounted for only 6%, However, HA-metal complexation was not affected by temperature.