Establishment of a Selective Extraction Technique for the Separation of Iron and Manganese Oxides and Organic Materials in the Natural Surface Coating Samples (NSCSs)

The selective extraction procedure applied to the natural surface coatings (NSCSs) developed on glass slides was improved and employed to extract and separate Mn oxides, Fe and Mn oxides and organic materials in the natural surface coating samples (NSCSs) collected directly on shingles in the Songhua River, China. The results show that the effects of selective extraction reagents on residual fractions of Fe and Mn in the NSCSs were invisible, and then Fe and Mn determined by sequential extraction procedure were identified as the total extractable Fe and Mn oxides in place of being determined by 10% HNO₃. 0.02M NH₂OHldrHCl + 0.01M HNO₃ could remove almost all of the Mn oxides from the non-residual fractions of NSCSs (from 81.4% to 87.4%) with less effect on Fe oxides (les17.1%). 0.4M Na₂S₂O₄ (pH 6.0) was effective at extracting Mn oxides existed in non-residual fractions (89.3%-98.0%), and to a less degree, Fe oxides (82.3%-111.9%). And that the effects of NH₂OHldrHCl and Na₂S₂O₄ extraction on OMs were almost negligible (less than 12.4%). These imply that the selective extraction procedure used in NSCSs developed on glass slides could be successfully applied to selectively separate Mn oxides, Fe and Mn oxides in NSCSs naturally growing on shingles as far as the total extractable Fe or Mn oxides were detected by sequential extraction procedure. Meanwhile, 30% of H₂O₂ heating at 40degC in water batch was used to selectively remove organic materials instead of 10% HNO₃ which was no selectivity and used to extract Mn oxides, Fe oxides and OMs together, and the results indicate that H₂O₂ was good at selectively removing organic materials from NSCSs (80.1%-87.4%) with less effect on Fe and Mn oxides extraction (less than 4.8% and 13.0, respectively).