Effect of aqueous concentration of humic acid on the sorption of polychlorinated biphenyls onto soil particle grain sizes

Purpose The role of initial aqueous humic acid concentrations (dose), as well as secondary environmental conditions on the sorption of PCB congeners PCB 28, 52, 77, 101, 105, 138, 153, and 180 onto soil particle grain sizes, was investigated in this study. Materials and methods Scanning electron microscopy equipped with energy dispersive X-ray and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy were used for the internal morphology and qualitative elemental analysis, as well as identification of possible functional groups found in commercial HA. Batch adsorption experiments were used for sorption studies. Results and discussion The results showed that the sorption of PCBs onto soil decreased with an increase in the aqueous HA concentrations. The adsorption of the selected PCBs onto the soils was found to decrease with an increase in the solution pH of humic acid. Thermodynamic studies showed that the partition coefficient values increased with an increase in solution temperature. All the standard free energy were negative indicating the spontaneity and feasibility of the sorption process with positive and high enthalpy and entropy values of the system. The sorption was best fitted with the Freundlich isotherm with the intensity parameter 1/ n found to be greater than 1. Conclusions The outcome of this study revealed that secondary pollution of river water may possibly be altered depending on variations in the environmental conditions such as pH and temperature. The presence of organic pollutants in alkaline soils having less organic matter content could increase the chances of leaching of organic pollutants causing groundwater contamination.