Ion activity products of iron sulfides in groundwaters: Implications from the Choshui fan-delta, Western Taiwan

Precipitation of iron sulfides is an important process in groundwater geochemistry because it reduces iron mobility in anaerobic aquifers. Iron sulfides occur in various allotropic forms such as amorphous FeS and pyrite, and their solubility products differ up to 13 orders of magnitude. However, few data for ion activity products (IAP) of iron sulfides defined by the equation: H⁺ + FeS_(S) = Fe²⁺ + HS^- in groundwater have been reported in the literature. We computed IAP values of iron sulfides for 46 groundwater samples from the Choshui fan-delta of Taiwan and 65 samples from other areas of the world. The mean of -log(IAP) values obtained for the 46 samples is 3.07 ± 0.34 (1σ), which is consistent with the solubility constant 3.00 ± 0.12 (Davison et al., 1999) of amorphous FeS, implying that the anaerobic aquifers in the Choshui fan-delta are still undergoing active sulfate-reduction processes and keeping the groundwater saturated with amorphous FeS.We suggest that the −logKsp value 3.91 of amorphous FeS adopted in the databases for WATEQF and PHREEQC computer programs ought to be revised to 3.00. Otherwise, the saturation indices (SI) calculated by the two computer programs will be an order of magnitude too high.