Premium
A Critical Study of the BaCl2‐Triethanolamine and the Ammonium Acetate Methods for Determining the Exchangeable Hydrogen Content of Soils
Author(s) -
Peech Michael,
Cowan R. L.,
Baker J. H.
Publication year - 1962
Publication title -
soil science society of america journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.836
H-Index - 168
eISSN - 1435-0661
pISSN - 0361-5995
DOI - 10.2136/sssaj1962.03615995002600010010x
Subject(s) - triethanolamine , chemistry , isopropyl alcohol , alcohol , ammonium acetate , inorganic chemistry , salt (chemistry) , ammonium carbonate , ammonium , carbonate , ethyl acetate , nuclear chemistry , organic chemistry , analytical chemistry (journal) , high performance liquid chromatography
A critical study of Mehlich's BaCl 2 ‐triethanolamine method for determining the exchangeable hydrogen in soils has led to a modification of the method which not only is simpler and more reproducible but gives results that are in better agreement with those obtained by the residual carbonate method. The buffer and the replacing solution of the original method have been replaced by a single extracting solution which consists of 0.5 N BaCl 2 and 0.055 N triethanolamine neutralized to pH 8.0 with HCl. The results obtained by the proposed method were also compared with those given by substracting the sum of the exchangeable metal ions from the amount of adsorbed ammonium as determined by the ammonium acetate (NH 4 OAc) method. The low results obtained by the NH 4 OAc method could not be attributed to fixation of the ammonium ion but were found to be due to loss of some ammoniated organic constituent upon washing the soil with 95% ethyl alcohol. Substitution of isopropyl alcohol for ethyl alcohol in washing out the excess of NH 4 OAc gave results for exchangeable hydrogen that were in excellent agreement with those obtained by the proposed BaCl 2 ‐triethanolamine and the residual carbonate methods.