Characteristics of Soil Humic Substances as Determined by Conventional and Synchrotron Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy

Humic substances (HS) play an important role in soil fertility and carbon sequestration in soil. The structural characteristics of soil HS, extracted from two natural soils and a laboratory-incubated soil, were investigated by conventional beamline-based Fourier transform infrared radiation (CB-FTIR), a common FTIR technique based on a conventional thermal source, and synchrotron radiation-based (SR-FTIR) spectroscopy. The relative area of absorbance peaks that appeared at 2930, 2860, 1711, and 1635 cm(-1) were calculated to make a comparison of the absorbance intensities. The absorption of aromatic functional groups of HS was stronger in SR-FTIR spectroscopy than in CB-FTIR spectroscopy. Compared with humic acid extracted with a 0.1 mol/l Na4P2O7 solution, the level of aliphaticity in humic acid extracted with a 0.1 mol/l NaOH solution was higher. The aliphaticity of humin associated with clay (HMc) was higher than that of humin associated with iron (HMi). These results suggest that SR-FTIR spectroscopy is a useful and nondestructive technique to study the structural characteristics of soil humic substances. Sequential extraction of soil humic substances with NaOH and Na4P2O7 solutions may be helpful in providing additional information in cases where differences in the material obtained from different extraction solutions occur. The aliphaticity and complexity of HMc were higher than those of HMi.