Study on Retardation Effect of a Heavy Metal in Sandy Soils

Retardation effect of heavy metals in soils caused by adsorption onto the surfaces of solids particles is well known phenomena. The adsorption of metal ions has been recognized more strong in clay mineral and organic matter contents rather than sands and gravels. In this study, we investigated the retardation effect in two sandy soils by conducting batch and column tests. The column tests were conducted to obtain the relationship between concentration and time known as breakthrough curve (BTC). We applied pulse type injection of ZnCl$_2$solution on the inlet boundary and monitored the effluent concentration at the exit boundary under steady state condition using EC-meter and ICP-AES. Batch test consisted of an equilibrium procedure for fine fractions collected from two sandy soils for various initial ZnCl$_2$concentrations, and analysis of Zn ions in equilibrated solution using ICP-AES. The results of column test showed that i) the peak concentration of Zn analyzed by ICP was far less than that detected by EC-meter for both soils and ii) travel times for peak concentration were more less identical for two different monitoring techniques. The first result can be explained by ion exchange between Zn and other cations initially present in the soil particles since ICP analysis showed a significant amount of Ca, Mg ions in the effluent. From the second result, we found that retardation effect was not present in these soils due to strong cation exchange capacity of Zn ion over other cations since we did not apply a solution containing more adsorptive cations such as Al. The result of batch test also showed high distribution coefficients (K$_{d}$) for two soils supporting the dominant ion exchange phenomena. Based on the retardation factor obtained from the Kd, we predicted the BTC using CDE model and compared with the BTC of Zn concentration obtained from ICP The predicted BTC, however, disagreed with the monitored in terms of travel time and magnitude of the peak concentrations. The only way to describe the prominent decrease of Zn ion was to introduce decay or sink coefficient in the CDE model to account for irreversible decrease of Zn ions in liquid phase.e.