R&D project for Humintech Ltd. (Duesseldorf, Germany), 2003-2004, PI: Perminova I.V.

Development of water soluble metal complexes of humic substances as micronutrients for agricultural and livestock uses

The goal of this project was to develop the technique for industrial preparation of water soluble iron humate as well as of humates of other metals (Zn, Mn, Cu). To achieve this goal, the following objectives were set:

• to characterize the properties of the raw humic material used for the product development - potassium humate - produced by Humintech Ltd. under the tradename "Powhumus";
• to synthesize water-soluble samples of iron humates using various techniques and production parameters;
• to characterize the main application parameters of the iron humates produced by different techniques - Fe content, solubility, pH stability, Ca2+ stability;
• to test efficiency of the iron humates produced by different techniques as microfertilizers;
• to optimize the preparation procedure of iron humates using the above parameters and synthesize Zn-humates and Mixed-humates using the same technique;
• to characterize the speciation of iron in the synthesized iron humates and to determine stability constants of iron complexes with humic acids isolated from Powhumus.