Abstract
Acid deposition is an environmental concern of global importance. One of the major deleterious effects of acid deposition on the lithosphere is aluminium mobilization in the soil environment and consequent aluminium toxicity to terrestrial vegetation and aquatic biota. We applied a sulfuric acid-containing nutrient solution to an artificial plant growth medium which contained Al(OH)3 precipitated on montmorillonite (interlayer-Al(OH)3). We determined pH and total concentrations of Al, Ca, Mg, K, Na, So4, Cl, NO3 and PO4 in leachate solutions and calculated the activity of Al, K, SO4 and other ions with MINTEQA1, a computer speciation program. We found that Al activity was controlled by interlayer-Al(OH)3 when 2pH + pSO4 was less than 12.7, as long as this phase was not depleted. When 2pH + pSO4 was more than 12.7, the Al activity followed a line parallel to crystalline alunite, implying an unknown Al-controlling phase of the same Al/S/K/OH ratio, but more soluble than the crystalline alunite. We propose that this unknown phase is amorphous alunite. The re-examination of several sets of published data for naturally-acidic surface and ground waters, mine waste drainage water, and solutions from acidic soils and sediments revealed that the Al activity in those solutions fell between what would be expected for equilibrium with the proposed amorphous alunite (upper limit) and the crystalline alunite (lower limit). This implies that an alunite-like aluminium sulfate may have controlled Al activity in natural environments that were influenced by sulfate and proton input from either natural or manmade causes.
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Xu, S., Harsh, J.B., Boyle, J.S. (1991). Solid phase control of aluminium activity in an artificial plant growth medium containing hydroxy-Al-montmorillonite. In: Wright, R.J., Baligar, V.C., Murrmann, R.P. (eds) Plant-Soil Interactions at Low pH. Developments in Plant and Soil Sciences, vol 45. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3438-5_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3438-5_3
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