Sorption behavior of 17 phthalic acid esters on three soils: Effects of pH and dissolved organic matter, sorption coefficient measurement and QSPR study

•Sorption capacities of PAEs increased with the decreasing soil pH.•The low concentration of DOM promoted the soil sorption of PAEs.•The high concentrations of DOM affected the sorption more complicated.•Soil partition coefficients (logKoc) were measured for 17 PAEs on three soils.•Satisfactory QSPR models were established to predict logKoc of PAEs. This work studies the sorption behaviors of phthalic acid esters (PAEs) on three soils by batch equilibration experiments and quantitative structure property relationship (QSPR) methodology. Firstly, the effects of soil type, dissolved organic matter and pH on the sorption of four PAEs (DMP, DEP, DAP, DBP) are investigated. The results indicate that the soil organic carbon content has a crucial influence on sorption progress. In addition, a negative correlation between pH values and the sorption capacities was found for these four PAEs. However, the effect of DOM on PAEs sorption may be more complicated. The sorption of four PAEs was promoted by low concentrations of DOM, while, in the case of high concentrations, the influence of DOM on the sorption was complicated. Then the organic carbon content normalized sorption coefficient (logKoc) values of 17 PAEs on three soils were measured, and the mean values ranged from 1.50 to 7.57. The logKoc values showed good correlation with the corresponding logKow values. Finally, two QSPR models were developed with 13 theoretical parameters to get reliable logKoc predictions. The leave-one-out cross validation (CV-LOO) indicated that the internal predictive power of the two models was satisfactory.