PNNL

Abstract

Understanding the kinetics of toxic ion reactions with ferrihydrite is crucial for predicting the dynamic behavior of contaminants in soil environments. In this study, the kinetics of As(V), Cr(VI), Cu, and Pb adsorption and desorption on ferrihydrite were investigated with a combination of laboratory macroscopic experiments, microscopic investigation and mechanistic modeling. The rates of As(V), Cr(VI), Cu, and Pb adsorption and desorption on ferrihydrite, as systematically studied using a stirred-flow method, was highly dependent on the reaction pH and metal concentrations and varied significantly among four metals. Spherical aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy (Cs-STEM) showed, at sub-nano scales, all four metals were distributed within the ferrihydrite particle aggregates homogeneously after adsorption reactions, with no evidence of surface diffusion-controlled processes. Based on experimental results, we developed a unifying kinetics model for both cation and oxyanion adsorption/desorption on ferrihydrite based on the mechanistic-based equilibrium model CD-MUSIC. Overall, the model described the kinetic results well, and we quantitatively demonstrated how the equilibrium properties of the cation and oxyanion binding to various ferrihydrite sites affected the adsorption and desorption rates. Our results provided a unifying quantitative modeling method for the kinetics of both cation and oxyanion adsorption/desorption on iron minerals.