Breakthrough Curves and Miscible Displacement of Cadmium Through Double-Layered Reclaimed Soils Amended with Macroporous Granule

Transport of heavy metals such as Cd is affected by several rate-limiting processes including adsorption and desorption by exchange reactions in soils. In this study, column transport and batch kinetic experiments were performed to assess Cd mobility in a double-layered soil with a reclaimed saline and sodic soil (SSS) as top soil and macroporous granule (MPG) as a bottom layer. For individual soil layer having different physical and chemical properties, Cd was considered to be nonlinear reactivity with the soil matrix in layered soils. The dispersive equation for reactive solutes was solved with three types of boundary conditions for the interface between soil layers. The adsorption of Cd with respect to the saline-sodic sandy loam and the MPG indicated that the nature of the sites or the mechanisms involved in the sorption process of Cd was different and the amounts of Cd for both of samples increases with increasing amounts of equilibrium concentration whereas the amount of Cd adsorbed in saline-sodic sandy loam soil was higher than that in MPG. The results of breakthrough curve indicating relative Cd retardation accompanied by layer material and sequence during leaching showed that the number of pore volumes to reach the maximum relative concentration of 1 increased in the order of MPG, SSS, and double layer of SSS-MPG. Breakthrough curves (BTCs) from column experiments were well predicted with our double-layered model where independently derived solute physical and retention parameters were implemented.