Abstract
The use of pesticides presents a risk to terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. For this reason, the development of strategies to prevent and restore pollution is of the greatest interest, including the adsorption to organic matter. The aim of the present study was to investigate the sorption/desorption and kinetics of atrazine, chlorfenvinphos, endosulfan sulfate, and trifluralin onto several raw organic wastes by batch experiments. Three kinetic models were used to fit the obtained sorption kinetics data and two to fit the obtained adsorption isotherm data; both the Freundlich and pseudo-second-order kinetic models described the sorption isotherms well. The desorption study revealed hysteresis in all cases, showing strong, and not completely reversible, adsorption in most cases, with the exception of atrazine-sawdust and chlorfenvinphos-sawdust and chicken manure combinations, for which responses were weak and irreversible. The best kinetic, adsorption and desorption constants were achieved for the hydrophobic pesticides. With respect to sorption-desorption rates, orujillo was found to be the best adsorbent for atrazine, while composted urban solid waste was more suitable for trifluralin and endosulfan sulfate. Sorption constants and simple correlations indicated that, not only the organic matter content, but also the nature of the organic matter itself, and the pesticide and adsorbent properties, determine pesticide sorption-desorption. The use of wastes as efficient and cheap adsorbents for reducing the risk of pesticide pollution is proposed.
Highlights
Pesticides are widely used in agriculture, there is a clear concern about the contamination of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems by their residues
A possible strategy to reduce the risk of point source contamination by pesticides is to use organic matter as a soil amendment in agricultural practices [3,4,5,6,7,8,9] or to use it in on-farm biopurification systems, commonly referred to as a “biobed” [4,10]
A kinetic evaluation of the equilibrium data suggested that the pseudo-second-order model best described the adsorption kinetics
Summary
Pesticides are widely used in agriculture, there is a clear concern about the contamination of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems by their residues. A possible strategy to reduce the risk of point source contamination by pesticides is to use organic matter as a soil amendment in agricultural practices [3,4,5,6,7,8,9] or to use it in on-farm biopurification systems, commonly referred to as a “biobed” [4,10]. These methods, compared to several techniques used for pesticide removal (e.g., sorption on activated carbon, oxidation with ozone, photocatalytic degradation, etc.), present many advantages, such as being cheaper, as well as being reliable and laborefficient, with low waste disposal costs. There is still a lack of studies evaluating the possible application of locally available, low-cost adsorbents to control or prevent the contamination of water resources caused by pesticides
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