Smectites charge density

Of the various inorganic soil constituents, smectites (montmorillonite clays) have the greatest potential for sorption of pesticides on account of their large surface area and abundance in soils. Weak base pesticides, both protonated and neutral species, have been shown to be sorbed as interlayer complexes. Sorption of atrazine on smectites ranges from 0 to 100% of added atrazine, depending on the surface charge density of the smectite (36). 

Figure 15.4(A) shows the effect of the R = Zn2+/Al3+ ratio, which determines the charge density of the LDH layer, on the Freundlich adsorption isotherms. K values are far higher than those measured for smectite or other inorganic matrices. The increase in Kf with the charge density (Kf= 215, 228, 325mg/g, respectively, for R = 4, 3 and 2) is supported by a mechanism of adsorption based on an anion exchange reaction. The desorption isotherms confirm that urease is chemically adsorbed by the LDH surface. The aggregation of the LDH platelets can affect noticeably their adsorption capacity for enzymes and the preparation of LDH adsorbant appears to be a determinant step for the immobilization efficiency. [ZnRAl]-urease hybrid LDH was also prepared by coprecipitation with R = 2, 3 and 4 and Q= urease/ZnRAl from 1 /3 up to 2.5. For Q < 1.0,100 % of the urease is retained by the LDH matrix whatever the R value while for higher Q values an increase in the enzyme/LDH weight ratio leads to a decrease in the percentage of the immobilized amount.

The paramagnetic probes detected heterogeneity of swelling behavior in smectites that was not obvious from X-ray diffraction data, presumably caused by variation of charge density on different clay layers within the same smectite sample. 

The type of clay present in a soil influences triazine sorption (Brown and White, 1969). Furthermore, variations in surface properties among different samples of the same clay type greatly influence sorption. For instance, sorption of atrazine on 13 clay samples, of which smectite was the dominant mineral, ranged from 0% to 100% of added atrazine (Figure 21.7), and was inversely correlated to the surface charge density of the smectites (Laird et al., 1992). Such data illustrate the complexity of sorption processes and the reason why simple predictive models relying on % OC, % clay, or surface area normalizations may fail to predict accurately the sorption of triazine by a particular soil. 

A detailed model of the interfacial region requires the specification of the position of the plane where the diffuse ion swarm begins, A popular choice in the literature of soil chemistry has been jc = 0, which means that outer-sphere surface complexes are neglected entirely and inner-sphere surface complexes are ignored if they would protrude beyond the plane to which (Tin, the intrinsic surface charge density, refers. (See Secs. 1.5 and 3.1 for a discussion of trjn ) That this choice is not reasonable physically, however, can be seen from a simple calculation involving Eq. 5.16. Consider a 1 1 electrolyte at the concentration Cq == 100 mol m" and suppose that /r(0) = SRT/F, a value that is not unrealistic for a smectite siloxane surface. Then k = = 1.04 x 10 m" at 298 K, a =... 

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