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Updated: Jan 26, 2026

Quantification of Humic and Fulvic Acids in Humate Ores, DOC, Humified Materials and Humic Substance-Containing Commercial Products
Published on: March 18, 2022
An efficient headspace gas chromatographic technique for determining humic acid content in fertilizer
Wei-Qi Xie1, Yi-Xian Gong2, Kong-Xian Yu3
1State Key Laboratory of Pulp and Paper Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China; School of Materials Science and Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China.
Abstract:
A fast, convenient and commercially available approach for analyzing humic acid content in fertilizer using headspace gas chromatography (HS-GC) is presented in this paper. Humic acid is converted into carbon dioxide based on the oxidation of humic acid in strong acidic medium and can be measured via automatic HS-GC. Conditions for the alkaline extraction and the humic acid oxidation process are also optimized. The new technique proved to be precise (RSD ≤ 3.59%) and accurate (relative errors≤9.46% as compared with the spectrophotometric approach). The newly established technique presents a practical tool to routinely analyze humic acid content in fertilizer during the fertilizer production.
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