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Impacts of ozone oxidation and borohydride reduction on the optical properties of humic substance isolates

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Abstract

The optical properties of dissolved organic matter (DOM) are of interest as they are used to monitor or optimize drinking and wastewater treatment and influence the fate of contaminants in surface waters. DOM optical properties are presented as resulting either from charge-transfer (CT) interactions or from a superposition model. Herein, we present investigations of the effects of reduction (sodium borohydride) and oxidation (ozone) on the absorbance and fluorescence of three humic substance isolates of different origins (soil, autochthonous and allochthonous aquatic isolates). Both ozone and borohydride treatments induce a strong decrease in light absorption properties of the three isolates. For fluorescence, the treatments induce a fluorescence increase for the soil isolate while for the aquatic isolates, they induce either an increase or decrease. The effect of reductive or oxidative treatments is discussed using both the CT and the superposition model. The variations in the isolate’s composition (phenolic, quinones, aromatics moieties) are used to discuss the observed differences in treatments effects between the three isolates. Overall, this study provides insight into the contributions of different compound classes to DOM optical properties as explained by the CT and superposition models.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the International Humic Substances Society for the continued provision of well-characterized isolates for the continued study of dissolved organic matter and humic substance optical properties.

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  1. Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Texas A & M University, College Station, TX, 77843, USA

    Garrett McKay

  2. Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering, Environmental Engineering Program, University of Colorado Boulder, 607 UCB, Boulder, CO, 80309, USA

    Frank Leresche

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Correspondence to Garrett McKay.

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McKay, G., Leresche, F. Impacts of ozone oxidation and borohydride reduction on the optical properties of humic substance isolates. Aquat Sci 84, 65 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00027-022-00892-1

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