Effects of natural organic matter on the microporous sorption sites of black carbon in a Yangtze River sediment

Abstract

Black carbon (BC), characterized by high microporosity and high specific surface area (SSA), has been demonstrated to have substantial contributions to the sorption of hydrophobic organic chemicals in soils and sediments. Other naturally occurring organic matters provide soft and penetrable sorption domains while may cling to BC and affect its original surface properties. In this work, we studied the sorption sites of a Yangtze River sediment sample with organic carbon (OC) content of 3.3 % and the preheated sediment (combusted at 375 °C) with reduced OC content (defined as BC) of 0.4 % by gas and pyrene sorption. The SSA and microporosity of the pristine and preheated sediments were characterized by N2 and CO2 adsorption. The results suggest that the adsorption of N2 was hindered by amorphous organic carbon (AOC) in the pristine sediment but CO2 was not. Instead, the uptake of CO2 was higher in the presence of AOC, likely due to the partition of CO2 molecules into the organic matter. The pyrene adsorptions to BC in pristine and preheated sediments show a similar adsorption capacity at high concentration, suggesting that AOC of ca. 2.9 % in the pristine sediment does not reduce the accessibility to the sorption sites on BC for pyrene.