Mean Activity Coefficients of Humic Acids as Physicochemical Characteristics of Their Behavior in Water Environment

[Image: see text] In this work, the dissociation of humic acids is investigated from the point of view of their mean activity coefficients. They are determined on the basis of two different concepts: sparingly soluble substance and multistep mechanism. It was found that the mean activity coefficients are generally higher, if the traditional concept is applied to the data, excepting the HA-A sample. Both the used concepts provide the mean activity coefficients dependent on the ionic strength, the amount of dissolved humic acids, and the types of electrolyte added in the studied suspensions. Their values based on the concept of a multistep mechanism and determined for humic acids in NaCl and NaI form a continuous curve and the individual character of their ions did not assert. It means that activity coefficients were affected only by the ionic strength and valence factor of the electrolytes irrespective of their chemical composition. The mean activity coefficients obtained for humic acids in HCl are lower in comparison with NaCl and NaI due to the common ion H(+). Comparing the results obtained for individual humic acids, we can state that the results obtained for the HA-E sample are very different from those of other samples. It seems that its solubility is very high, but the majority of the dissolved particles remained in the molecular form and only a small amount of ions is formed.