Adsorption Behavior of PAEs on Loess–HTMAC Bentonite and Its Effects on the Performance of Cut-Off Walls
Publication: Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 149, Issue 5
Abstract
Phthalic acid estes (PAEs) are typical organic contaminants in landfill leachate. Loess–bentonite cut-off walls were widely used to control the transport of organic contaminants. Bentonite modified by hexadecyltrimethylammonium chloride (HTMAC-B) mixed with loess material may play a good role in enhancing the adsorption of organic pollutants. The adsorption batch tests were used to analyze the adsorption characteristics and mechanisms of loess–HTMAC-B for single and mixed solutions of dimethyl phthalate (DMP) and diethyl phthalate (DEP). Contaminant transport simulations were then performed to investigate the performance of the modified bentonite–loess cut-off wall. The results show that the adsorption capacity of loess–bentonite for single DMP can be 1.7 times lower than that for mixed DMP. Results of numerical transport simulations based on the adsorption results show that the Tóth model performs better than the Langmuir model as it can well capture adsorption behavior induced by the heterogeneous surface morphology due to the presence of an HTMAC cation in the bentonite interlayer. We show that HTMAC amended loess–bentonite can effectively increase the breakthrough time of PAEs. In order to meet the designed service time of 50 years, should be controlled below 0.9 for DMP and 10.1 for DEP in the case of 1.2 m cut-off walls.
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Data Availability Statement
Data are available from the authors upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
This research was funded by the “Pioneer” and “Leading Goose” R&D Program of Zhejiang (Grant No. 2022C03051), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41977223 and 41931289) and XPCC (Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps) Major Science and Technology Projects (2018AA003), the National Key R & D Program of China (Grant No. 2018YFC1802303), and Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province (Grant No. LR20E080002).
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Information
Published In
Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 149 • Issue 5 • May 2023
Copyright
© 2023 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Oct 4, 2022
Accepted: Dec 19, 2022
Published online: Feb 24, 2023
Published in print: May 1, 2023
Discussion open until: Jul 24, 2023
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Acids
- Adsorption
- Bentonite
- Chemical compounds
- Chemical processes
- Chemicals
- Chemistry
- Clays
- Contaminant transport
- Core walls
- Diaphragm walls
- Engineering fundamentals
- Environmental engineering
- Geomechanics
- Geotechnical engineering
- Loess
- Models (by type)
- Numerical models
- Pollutants
- River engineering
- Sediment
- Soil mechanics
- Soils (by type)
- Sorption
- Structural engineering
- Structural members
- Structural systems
- Walls
- Water and water resources
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