Characteristics of adsorption kinetics and isotherms of Cu(II) by sediment under different hydrodynamic of the Ganjiang river, China

Abstract Discharges from industrial and agricultural processes into water bodies can result in the accumulation of heavy metals such as Cu(II) in the sediment via various physical and chemical interactions. While there are many studies of the adsorption of heavy metals by sediment, few have considered the effects of hydrodynamic conditions. Here, the adsorption of Cu(II) by sediments under different hydrodynamic conditions was studied using a particle entrainment simulator. The sediment samples were obtained from the Poyang Lake basin in China. Models describing pseudo-first-order, pseudo-second-order, Elovich and intraparticle diffusion kinetics and the Langmuir, Freundlich, Temkin and Dubin Radushkevich adsorption isotherms were used to evaluate the adsorption of Cu(II) by the sediments under different hydrodynamic conditions. The results showed that adsorption equilibrium for Cu(II) by the sediment was attained within 4 hours and increased with increasing shear stress; the kinetics were consistent with pseudo-second-order and Elovich models, indicating that chemical processes were involved in adsorption; the adsorption isotherms could be described by the Langmuir and Freundlich models. Changes in the sediment shear stress had little effect on the maximum adsorption capacity and values ranged from 0.9425 to 1.0634 mg/g. The results indicated that the adsorption sites for Cu(II) in soil were heterogeneous.