Abstract
Ferrocyanide adsorption onto goethite and gibbsite is normally regarded as an important reaction in cyanide-contaminated soil systems over a broad range of environmental conditions. However, the contribution of these metal oxides to the retention capacity of ferrocyanide by real soil samples remains unclear. This study investigated the adsorption behavior of ferrocyanide onto two representative metal oxides (goethite and gibbsite), as well as its adsorption onto five soil samples containing variable amounts of metal oxides. It was found that the Qmax of goethite is much higher than that of gibbsite under comparable pH conditions, indicating the importance of goethite in controlling the geochemical behavior of ferrocyanide in natural soil systems. Ferrocyanide adsorption onto goethite is marginally affected by ionic strength, suggesting its strong affinity to goethite. FTIR results further demonstrated the formation of inner-sphere complexes between goethite and ferrocyanide. No precipitations were detected. Despite the strong affinity of ferrocyanide to these metal oxides, the estimated contribution of goethite to ferrocyanide retention in real soils was quite small, ranging from 1.06 to 8.15%. The results imply that soil components other than these crystalline metal oxides may dominate the retention behavior of ferrocyanide in natural systems.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52270118, 21976021, and 41907107) and National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2019YDF1100504).
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YW: Conceptualization, Writing—Original Draft, Writing—Review & Editing, Supervision, Project administration. RY and SC: Validation, Data curation, Formal analysis, Visualization. HZ: Investigation, Methodology, Formal analysis, Visualization. TR: Validation, Writing—Review & Editing. SL: Data curation, Writing—Review & Editing. JG and YL: Writing—Review & Editing.
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Wei, Y., Yao, R., Chen, S. et al. The relative contributions of iron and aluminum oxides to ferrocyanide retention in soils: a comparative study. Int. J. Environ. Sci. Technol. 21, 293–304 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-023-04984-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-023-04984-9