Iranian Journal of

Background and Objective: Phosphorus (P), as one of the agricultural, industrial and urban wastewater pollutants, plays an important role in eutrophication of surface waters. Use of cationic sorbents for removal of anions including phosphate from aqueous environments is a well-known and effective method. Meanwhile, layered double hydroxides (LDHs) are known as effective anion exchange sorbents. In this study, the efficiency of Mg-Al layered double hydroxide (Mg-Al-LDH) for P removal from aqueous solutions was investigated.

Methods and Materials: The Mg-Al layered double hydroxide (Mg-Al-LDH) was synthesized by co-precipitation method and used for removing of P from aqueous solutions. The kinetics and equilibrium studies of phosphate adsorption by Mg-Al-LDH were performed using a batch experiment at different contact times, initial phosphate concentrations, pH values, ionic strengths and doses of sorbent.

Results: The results of the kinetics experiments showed that sorption of P with LDH reached equilibrium after 30 min. The highest correlation coefficient was obtained for the pseudo-second order model, indicated that chemical sorption controlled the rate of phosphate sorption by LDH. The results showed that the sorption experiments data were in good agreement with Langmuir model and the maximum adsorption capacity predicted by this model was 37.83 mg P/g LDH.

Conclusion: The current study revealed that P adsorption by LDH was increased by increasing contact time and concentration of LDH, but decreased by increasing initial concentration of P, pH and ionic strength. The optimum conditions for phosphate anion adsorption by Mg-Al-LDH were determined as P initial concentration of 20 mg/L, contact time of 120 min, pH of 3.0, sorbent dose of 10 g/L and ionic strength of 0.03 mol/L.