Abstract
Organic and inorganic carbon contents of marine sediments are important to reconstruct marine productivity, global carbon cycle, and climate change. A proper method to separate and determine organic and inorganic carbons is thus of great necessity. Although the best method is still disputable, the acid leaching method is widely used in many laboratories because of its ease-of-use and high accuracy. The results of the elemental analysis of sediment trap samples reveal that organic and inorganic carbon contents cannot be obtained using the acid leaching method, causing an infinitely amplified error when the carbon content of the decarbonated sample is 12%±1% according to a mathematical derivation. Acid fumigation and gasometric methods are used for comparison, which indicates that other methods can avoid this problem in organic carbon analysis. For the first time, this study uncovers the pitfalls of the acid leaching method, which limits the implication in practical laboratory measurement, and recommends alternative solutions of organic/inorganic carbon determination in marine sediments.
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the helpful suggestions provided by Martin G. Wiesner of Universität Hamburg, Germany. We also thank Pengfei Ma, Shaohua Zhao, Xiaodong Zhang, Kui Duan, and Baozhi Lin from Tongji University for their participation in the cruise or experimental analysis.
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Foundation item: The National Natural Science Foundation of China under contract Nos 41530964, 41776047, 41876048 and 91528304.
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Ling, C., Liu, Z., Zhang, J. et al. Pitfalls of acid leaching method for determining organic and inorganic carbon contents in marine sediments. Acta Oceanol. Sin. 39, 96–102 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13131-020-1631-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13131-020-1631-z