Abstract
THE valency state in which chromium occurs in seawater not only provides important information concerning the geochemical behaviour of this element in marine environment but has also in recent years become significant in connexion with the problem of disposal of radioactive waste. For example, Osterberg et al.1 investigated the variation of the spread of the Columbia River water along the Oregon coast of the Pacific by using chromium-51 which was originally released from the Hanford reactor as a radioactive tracer. In this case, it was reported by Cutshall et al.2 that the major part of chromium-51 stayed in the original hexavalent state in seawater even at several hundred kilometres from the river mouth. In order to understand the cycle of radioactive chromium in the sea-water, therefore, it seems indispensable to know the valency state in which chromium in seawater is stable. Unfortunately, the present day knowledge of this is very limited. In his recent compilation Riley3 gave six references for the chromium content of seawater but these data are not sufficient to indicate general trends in the behaviour of chromium in seawater. In these investigations, except for the two investigations by emission spectrography, chromium was separated with hydroxides of aluminium, iron or chromium itself. These separations are only effective when chromium in seawater is present in a trivalent form.
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References
Osterberg, C., Cutshall, N., and Cronin, J., Science, 150, 1585 (1965).
Cutshall, N., Johnson, V., and Osterberg, C., Science, 152, 202 (1966).
Riley, J. P., Chemical Oceanography, 2, 346 (Academic Press, London and New York, 1965).
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Sillén, L. G., Oceanography, Publ. No. 67, 549 (Amer. Assoc. Adv. Sci., Washington, D.C., 1961).
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FUKAI, R. Valency State of Chromium in Seawater. Nature 213, 901 (1967). https://doi.org/10.1038/213901a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/213901a0
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