Ultrafiltration and determination of Zn– and Cu–humic substances complexes stability constants

This study exhibits that size fractionation of humic substances (HS) and their metal complexes by ultrafiltration is an efficient procedure for simultaneous determination of stability constants. Using sequential-stage ultrafiltration and a radiotracer technique the HS–Cu and HS–Zn complexes studied can gently be size-fractionated and their free metal fractions simply be discriminated. The conditional stability constants Ki obtained for size fractions of these HS metal complexes exhibit a clear molecular size dependence. Accordingly, the highest Ki values (6.6 for Zn and 6.4 for Cu) are found in the HS fractions of >105 kDa. Moreover, the overall stability constants K found for Cu (log K=5.5) and Zn complexes (log K=4.5) of the aquatic HS complexes studied are quite comparable to those reported in the literature.