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Geoscience ›› 2018, Vol. 32 ›› Issue (01): 113-120.DOI: 10.19657/j.geoscience.1000-8527.2018.01.11

• Geochemistry • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Impacts and Mechanisms of Natural Organic Matter and pH on the Transport of Nanobiochar

YANG Meihong1,2(), LI Zhixiong1,2, LIU Yuyan1,2, MA Shaoqiang1,2, CHEN Jiawei1,2()   

  1. 1. State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, China University of Geosciences, Beijing 100083, China
    2. School of Earth Sciences and Resources, China University of Geosciences, Beijing 100083, China
  • Received:2017-10-11 Revised:2017-11-12 Online:2018-02-10 Published:2018-02-05

Abstract:

Biochar, a kind of typical black carbon, has attracted attention for its application development in recent years. Since biochar is applied into the soils, some would gradually become fragmented into micro or nano sized biochar particles under the long term supergene geochemical process. It is very important to investigate the transport of biochar, specially, more reactive nanobiochar. Whereas, such research is few up to now. Hence, the column experiments were conducted on the transport of nanobiochar in quartz sand column to explore the breakthrough curve and retention curve. The aim of the present study is to elucidate the mechanism of the effects of natural organic matter (NOM) and different pH values (pH=4,7,10) on nanobiochar transport behavior. The results showed that humic acid (HA, a model NOM) enhanced the mobility of nanobiochar, and neutral or alkaline aqueous medium favored nanobiochar transport. One reason is that the dispersibility of nanobiochar was improved. The other is due to net negative charge of biochar and quartz particles increased in the presence of HA and alkaline environment. So, the Zeta potential of particles increased and electrostatic repulsion force strengthened, which was beneficial to the transport of nanobiochar. This work is of importance to understand the geochemical transport behavior of nanobiochar and the potential risk of contaminant adsorption onto nanobiochar transported in the environment.

Key words: nanobiochar, transport, column experiment, humic acid, pH value in the environment

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