Sorption of Chlorophenolates in Soils and Aquifer and Marine Sediments

This article describes the sorption behavior of 3 hydrophobic ionizable chlorophenols—2,4,6-trichlorophenol, 2,3,4,6-tetrachlorophenol, and pentachlorophenol—in different types of natural sorbents. A series of experiments was carried out with 11 topsoil samples, 9 aquifer sediments, and 12 marine sediments differing in pH, organic-matter content, and mineral composition and presumably also in type of organic matter due to their differing origins. Ionized forms of chlorophenols dominated in almost all sorption experiments. Freundlich isotherm coefficients K f and 1/n, as well as organic-matter sorption coefficient (log K ₒₘ) and free-energy change (ΔG ᵒ), were calculated for all 3 compounds in all sorbents. The sorption intensity of predominantly ionized chlorophenols increased linearly with the increase of sorbent organic-matter content and decreased with the increasing sorbent pH. Different sorption behavior of all 3 compounds in marine sediments with respect to topsoils and aquifer sediments was indicated by significant differences in K f and 1/n coefficients as well as in log K ₒₘ and ΔG ᵒ values. The highest K f and log K ₒₘ values were obtained for sorption of chlorophenolic compounds in topsoils and the lowest in marine sediments, although both groups of sorbents had similar organic-matter content. The 1/n coefficient, reflecting the isotherm nonlinearity, was considerably lower than unity for all compounds in almost all sorbents. The most significant deviation of sorption isotherms from linearity was observed in marine sediments. Only marine sediments showed a linear increase in sorption intensity of all 3 compounds with the increase in sorbent-specific surface area. These results pointed to a different mechanism of sorption in marine and terrestrial sorbents and confirmed that the capacity of sorption was related to amount as well as type and origin of organic matter.