• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.38 no.5
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• pp.238-246
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• 2005

We conducted this investigation to observe competitive adsorption phenomena among the heavy metals onto the available sorption sites of soil particle surfaces in sandy clay loam and clay soil collected from Nonsan city, Chungnam and Yoosung, Daejeon in Korea, respectively. Polluted and contaminated soils can often contain more than one heavy metal species, resulting in competition for available sorption sites among heavy metals in soils due to complex competitive ion exchange and specific sorption mechanism. And the adsorption characteristics of the heavy metals were reported that the selectivity for the sorption sites was closely related with electropotential and electro negativity carried by the heavy metals. The heavy metals were treated as single, binary and ternary systems as bulk solution phase. Adsorption in multi-element system was different from single-element system as Cr, Pb and Cd. The adsorption isotherms showed the adsorption was increased with increasing equilibrium concentrations. For binary and ternary systems, the amount of adsorption at the same equilibrium concentration was influenced by the concentration of individual ionic species and valence carried by the respective heavy metal. Also we found that the adsorption isotherms of Cd and Pb selected in this experiment were closely related with electronegativity and ionic potential regardless number of heavy metals in solution, while the adsorption of Cr carried higher valance and lower electro negativity than Cd and Pb was higher than those of Cd and Pb, indicating that adsorption of Cr was influenced by ionic potential than by electronegativity. Therefore adsorption in multi-element system could be influenced by electronegativity and ionic potential and valance for the same valance metals and different valance, respectively. But it still needs further investigation with respect to ionic strength and activity in multi-element system to verify sorption characteristics and reaction processes of Cr, especially for ternary system in soils.