Yuki Audette, Chris Parsons, Fereidoun Rezanezhad and Philippe Van Cappellen of the Ecohydrology Research Group and the Water Institute co-authored a paper titled “Impact of hydrofluoric acid treatment on humic acid properties extracted from organic soils and an organic amendment: A technical evaluation”, which was recently published in Soil Science Society of America Journal. The study shows that hydrofluoric acid (HF) treatment was effective in removing inorganic soil constituents, but does not significantly affect the distributions of functional groups of the extracted humic acid compounds. For two soils, the HF treatment caused a drop in the proton binding capacity at alkaline pH, likely because aluminosilicates, amorphous silica and iron oxides contributed to the observed the proton binding capacity of the untreated samples. Therefore, the HF treatment is recommended for soil samples containing these mineral constituents, even for organic-rich soils. The study included collaborators from Wilfrid Laurier University and University of Guelph.
Read the paper at: https://dl.sciencesocieties.org/publications/sssaj/abstracts/0/0/sssaj2018.11.0419?access=0&view=pdf