Iron Oxide Removal from Soils and Clays

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Abstract
Iron oxide coatings or crystals must be removed from soils in which they are found in many mineralogical techniques for identification of colloidal layer silicates as well as the identification of silt and sand grains with the polarizing microscope. A procedure is presented which employs sodium dithionite (Na2S2O4, hyposulfite, or “hydrosulfite”) as the reductor, and 0.3 molar citrate with or without Fe‐3 specific Versene as the chelating reagent. It is a neutral system the pH of which is kept at 7.3. The reaction is fast, as much as 20% of iron oxides (hematite, geothite, or limonite but not magnetite or ilmenite) being removed from a soil in 15 minutes, and does not precipitate either elemental sulfur or iron sulfides. Like other procedures, it causes some decrease of exchange capacity of layer silicates which contain iron, and at the same time may increase the exchange capacity of kaolinic soils.
Funding Information
  • Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation