EXTRACTION OF THE HUMIC ACID FROM THAR LIGNITE COAL BY USING DIFFERENT SOLUTIONS

Abstract

Malnutrition is one of the major world’s problem to solve, for this purpose hundreds of scientists are working to find ways for advanced horticultural food mass production and harvesting more and more crops. Many of artificial fertilizers have been discovered to increase soil fertility but humic acid is natural one, which is present in coal (lignite), topsoil, tonic waters, garbage, kitchen midden or refuse heaps, oceanic & pond silts, peat marsh, carbon containing shales etc. HA is an agrochemical biotic acid which was aromatized by COOH-, R-OH-, OH-, R- clusters tied-up and can be specified via meteorological interpretation, as existence of acidulous, OH- & R-NH2 groups even as acquired through the vast accumulation of lignite coal of Pakistan. So it is necessary to find a way for its extraction to get optimum production. For this initially coal from Thar (sindh) was oxidized with 2% HNO3 then treated with 1.0, 2.5, 3, and 3.5% KOH and Na4P2O7.H2O solutions for extraction of humic acid. The extraction of AH in KOH was 19.99% and in Na4P2O7.H2O solution was 15.54%. That shows KOH found more optimum for HA extraction than Na4P2O7.H2O. Characterization techniques are important to understand structural properties by using useful advanced techniques such as UV-Vis spectrophotometry used for identifying compounds, FTIR analyses is used for study of active functional groups, Zeta potential is used to detect stability of compound and XRD analysis is used for textured analysis. This chapter discusses in detail the methods, sample preparation and extraction of humic acid from coal in two different solutions.