pH-Dependent sorption of acidic organic chemicals to soil organic matter

Due to their increased polarity, many contemporary biologically active chemicals exhibit acid functions and may thus dissociate to their anionic conjugated base at pH values typically present in the environment. Despite its negative charge, soil organic matter (SOM) has been demonstrated to be the main sorbent in soils, even for the anionic species of organic acids. Nevertheless, few data exist that allow for a systematic interpretation of the sorption of organic acids into SOM. Therefore, in this study, the sorption of the neutral and anionic species of 32 diverse organic acids belonging to nine different chemical groups to SOM was investigated. Partition coefficients were determined from HPLC retention volumes on a column packed with peat, at three Ca(2+)-concentrations and over a pH range of 4.5-7.5. The influence of Ca(2+)-concentrations on anion sorption was small (factor 2 in the usual environmental Ca(2+)-concentration range) and independent of molecular structure. Generally, the organic carbon-water partition coefficients, K(oc), of both the neutral and anionic species increased with increasing molecular size and decreased with increasing polarity. At an environmentally relevant Ca(2+)-concentration of 10 mM, the investigated anions sorbed between a factor of 7-60 less than the corresponding neutral acid. This factor was more homogeneous within a group of structurally related compounds. These results indicate that while similar nonionic interactions seem to govern the partitioning of both the neutral and anionic species into SOM, the electrostatic interactions of the anionic species with SOM are a complex and currently not well understood function of the type of acidic functional group. The HPLC-based, flow through method presented in this study was shown to yield consistent results for a wide range of organic acids in a high-throughput manner. It should therefore prove highly useful in further investigating how different acidic functional groups affect anion sorption to SOM.