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A Critical Study of the BaCl₂-Triethanolamine and the Ammonium Acetate Methods for Determining the Exchangeable Hydrogen Content of Soils¹

ABSTRACT

A critical study of Mehlich's BaCl₂-triethanolamine method for determining the exchangeable hydrogen in soils has led to a modification of the method which not only is simpler and more reproducible but gives results that are in better agreement with those obtained by the residual carbonate method. The buffer and the replacing solution of the original method have been replaced by a single extracting solution which consists of 0.5N BaCl₂ and 0.055N triethanolamine neutralized to pH 8.0 with HCl.

The results obtained by the proposed method were also compared with those given by substracting the sum of the exchangeable metal ions from the amount of adsorbed ammonium as determined by the ammonium acetate (NH₄OAc) method. The low results obtained by the NH₄OAc method could not be attributed to fixation of the ammonium ion but were found to be due to loss of some ammoniated organic constituent upon washing the soil with 95% ethyl alcohol. Substitution of isopropyl alcohol for ethyl alcohol in washing out the excess of NH₄OAc gave results for exchangeable hydrogen that were in excellent agreement with those obtained by the proposed BaCl₂-triethanolamine and the residual carbonate methods.

¹ Contribution as Agronomy Paper No. 529 from Department of Agronomy, New York State College of Agriculture, Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y. Presented before Div. II, Soil Science Society of America, Dec. 7, 1960, Chicago, Ill.

² Professor of Soil Science and formerly graduate assistants, respectively.

Received for publication March 22, 1961. Accepted for publication April 20, 1961.