Solution and Condensed Phase Characterization

Improvements in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) instrumentation, magnetic field strength, pulse sequences, and computer technology and software have increased the range of applications and specific elements available for study by NMR. The five chapters in this Part clearly indicate the benefits of these advances, especially regarding studies of aquatic, environmental significance. Each of the studies focuses on environmentally significant issues. For example, chlorination is widely used to disinfect drinking waters, a method that can produce undesirable disinfection by-products. This was first recognized in 1974 with the discovery of trihalomethanes in most finished drinking waters where hypochlorite was used for disinfection. Chapter 7 examines the chlorination of alanine and relates it to the chlorination reactions of acetaldehyde and ammonia, a topic of importance with respect to drinking water disinfection. Aluminum is also widely used in drinking water treatment, and understanding its hydrolysis chemistry and complexation behavior is of great importance to aquatic chemistry. In addition, the aquatic chemistry of aluminum is important because acid rain can release soluble aluminum ions from clay into soil water, possibly damaging terrestrial plant life. Aluminum may eventually reach and accumulate in hydrological systems where it can be toxic to aquatic life. Chapters 8 and 9 focus on 27Al NMR in defining aqueous aluminum speciation in a mildly acidic solution or in the presence of complexing organic compounds. Furthermore, aluminum is of environmental and geochemical significance since it is an integral component of clays, another ubiquitous constituent of natural waters (surface and ground). Interaction between clays, cations, and internal water molecules can be significant in understanding the fate and transport of chemicals through the environment. Since colloidal suspensions of clay materials frequently represent challenges to water and wastewater treatment, understanding of physical and chemical processes are of tantamount importance to the environmental scientist and engineer. Chapter 10 explores cation behavior in clay matrices by using “uncommon” nuclei such as 7Li, 23Na, and 133Cs as probes. This is unique in that many NMR studies of complexation in clay have focused primarily upon the nuclei 27A1 and 29Si.