Surface charge evaluation of soils, clays and oxides

Two objectives are achieved in this thesis: (1) to develop a new method to measure the pH-dependent net surface charge of soils and (2) to determine if, by a combination of the surface charge evaluated by potentiometric titration and ion adsorption, we can separate the permanent charge, generated by the isomorphous substitution, from the variable charge. First, a laboratory procedure, using backtitration, was developed for the measurement of the pH-dependent net surface charge. This method was tested on ten soil horizons from Gleysols and Podzols. It appears that the pH-dependent net surface charge, measured by this technique, shows good agreement with that measured by ion adsorption. It is also possible, with this method, to identify some plateaus and inflection points in the backtitration curve associated with protonation/deprotonation reactions of specific soil components. Secondly, it was demonstrated that it is possible to increase the surface charge of montmorillonite with Al-oxide coatings under specific conditions