Heavy metals in water bodies purified by suspended substrate of rivers

Abstract

The equations, which are used to describe the relationships of adsorption quantity (s), adsorption percent (Pa), aqueous equilibrium concentration(c) of heavy metal on river suspended substrates and the ratio of adsorbent to water(j), are developed when heavy metal adsorption on river suspended substrate satisfies with linear adsorption equation. The results, according to the simulation from heavy metal adsorption on suspended substrates of several main Chinese rivers from a previous research report, indicated that these developed equations could describe the linear adsorption processes in practice very well, meanwhile, the adsorption equilibrium constant of adsorbent for heavy metal was an intensity factor regardless of ratio of suspended substrates to water but strongly depended on media's pH. Furthermore, the suspended substrates of Yellow River gave stronger purification ability for Pb than for Cd and Cu. When Cd was purified by different river suspended substrates, it exhibited that the order of their purification ability for Cd was that of Songhuajiang River > Zhujiang Pearl River > Yellow River, which was consistent with their contents of cation exchange capacity(CEC). In addition, we estimated and compared the purification ability of river suspended substrates for cadmium, and the resulting purification percent was 37.64%, 64.58% and 50.98% for Songhuajiang River, Yangtze River and Zhujiang River, respectively.