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This study investigated the sorption kinetics of a model solute (naphthalene) with a series of biochars prepared from a pine wood at 150-700 °C (referred as PW100-PW700) to probe the effect of the degree of carbonization of a biochar. The samples were characterized by the elemental compositions, thermal gravimetric analyses, Fourier transform IR spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, Brunauer-Emmett-Teller-N(2) surface areas (SA), and pore size distributions. Naphthalene exhibited a fast rate of sorption to PW150 owning a high oxygen content and a small SA, due supposedly to the solute partition into a swollen well-hydrated uncarbonized organic matter of PW150. The partial removal of polar-group contents in PW250/PW350, which increased the compactness of the partition medium, decreased the diffusion of the solute into the partition phase to result in a slow sorption rate. With PW500 and PW700 displaying low oxygen contents and high SA, the solute sorption rates were fast, attributed to the near exhaustion of a partition phase in the sample and to the fast solute adsorption on the carbonized biochar component. The results illustrate that the sorption rate of a solute with biochars is controlled largely by the solute's diffusivity in the biochar's partition phase, in which the medium compactness affects directly the solute diffusivity.
Chen et al. (Wed,) studied this question.