Metal‐organic interactions in natural aquatic systems

This paper presents a mechanistic approach to interpret titration curves of cupric ion complexation by physically and chemically heterogeneous organic moieties (i.e. M‐humic acids) extracted from the sediments of River Mahaweli, Sri Lanka. The affinity spectrum function, N(k), of the M‐humic‐Cu⁺⁺ system differentiated the total number of sites into three types. The discrete ligand based calculations fit the Cu‐humic binding data reasonably well.

Key words:

• Humic acid
• copper
• complexation
• Sri Lanka