Effects of Copper on the Sorption of Phthalate Est

Authors: Nan Xu Jinren Ni Weiling Sun

Publish Date: 2007/05/22

Volume: 184, Issue: 1-4, Pages: 207-216

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Abstract

The sorption of hydrophobic organic pollutants on soils or sediments has been widely studied However more attention in the previous studies has been paid to sorption mechanism and effects of relevant environmental factors few studies were reported on effects of heavy metals on the sorption of hydrophobic organic pollutants In this paper sorption of phthalate esters diethyl phthalate DEP and dinbutyl phthalate DnBP and copper on the Yellow River sediment was investigated with particular attention to the effects of copper on the phthalate sorption The experimental results show that the sorption isotherms of phthalates could be reasonably described by the Freundlich equation Higher sorption equilibrium constant was obtained for DnBP due to its greater hydrophobicity The existence of copper would enhance the sorption of DnBP Moreover strong sorption of copper to sediment were found and attributed to abundant carbonates in the Yellow River sediment After carbonates were removed notable effects of copper on the phthalate sorption were observed due to the decrease of copper sorption and the increase of aqueous copper concentration With 153 mg l−1 copper added the partition coefficient decreases by 52 for DEP and increases by 79 for DnBP Primary factors that may influence interaction between the sorption of copper and DEP and DnBP were also investigated such as complexation between copper and phthalate and phthalate hydrophobicity The complexation between phthalate esters and copper was substantiated by polarogram and fluorescence spectrograph and the calculated mol ratio of complexation copper phthalate was found to be 21

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