Influence of reactivity on transport of metal ions in humic gels

This diploma thesis deals with copper(II) ions diffusion in the humic hydrogels. The hydrogels were prepared from several samples of humic acids using different method and their isolation conditions from the original matrix. A selective blocking of functional groups (COOH, OH) was performed in the selected samples of humic acids. These reactive groups were selectively blocked using methylation agent trimethylsilyl-diazomethane. The success of performed methylation and functional groups blocking was verified using a FT-IR spectroscopy. There was carried out the set of diffusion experiments. The experimental arrangement was selected to enable an instantaneous planar source met-hod for data processing. The basis of this method was to determine the copper(II) ions con-centration distribution in the hydrogels. The method consists of slicing of the hydrogels after the diffusion experiments, extraction of the copper ions in the solution and determina-tion of concentration in the extracts from individual slices using UV-VIS spectroscopy. Based on the experimental data the effective diffusion coefficients were determined. The resulting values include both the effect of hydrogels structure and the effect of the reaction between Cu(II) ions and humic acids. There were prepared gels with defined portion of blocked functional groups for selected samples, which allowed to investigate the effect of reactivity on the copper ions diffusion without the significant changes in the gel structure (porosity). The blocking of functional groups reflected in a lower values of diffusion coefficients in comparison to the gels prepared from unmodified humic acids as follows. There was also confirmed the effect of humic acids isolation procedure and their properties on the diffusivity