Investigation of Complex Formation Process of Copper with Macromolecular Organic Substances, Isolated from Natural Waters

Abstract

Natural macromolecular organic substances-fulvic acids take an active part in complex formation processes and stipulate migration forms of heavy metals in natural waters The calculation of the migration forms of heavy metals is one of the problematic issue of the contemporary chemistry, which couldn’t be solved without using the conditional stability constants of fulvate complexes. In spite of researches, experimental data on stability constants of complex compounds of fulvic acids with heavy metals ( among them copper) are heterogeneous and they differ in several lines from each other. One of the reason of such condition is ignoring an average molecular weight of the associates of fulvic acids, which finally causes the wrong results. Complex formation process between copper (II) and fulvic acids was studied by the solubility method at pH=9.0. Cu(OH)₂ suspension was used as a solid phase. Fulvic acids were isolated from Paravani lake by the adsorption –chromatographic method. In this article is shown that, during complex formation process every 1/4 part of an associate of fulvic acids(Mw=7610), inculcates into copper's inner coordination sphere as an integral ligand, so it may assume, that the average molecular weight of the associate of fulvic acids which takes part in complex formation process equals to 1903. This part of the associate of fulvic acids was conventionally called an“active associate".The average molecular weight of the“active associate”was used for determination the composition of copper fulvate complex, the concentration of free ligand and stability constant, which equals to 2,25x10⁷