Chemistry

Materials science

Kaolinite

Particle size

Mineralogy

Geology

Montmorillonite

Chemical engineering

Oceanography

Physical chemistry

Paleontology

Hematite

Adsorption

Morphology (biology)

Engineering

Composite material

Particle (ecology)

Clay minerals

The Science of The Total Environment

Particle morphology plays an important role in solid-water interface adsorption, which affects the fate and behavior of phosphorus (P) in rivers and lakes and the resulting eutrophication. In this paper, three minerals including kaolinite, montmorillonite and hematite were considered to investigate the contributions of particle morphology to P adsorption using adsorption experiments and microscopic examinations. The Taylor expansion method is applied to quantitatively characterize the heterogeneity of surface morphology. The results reveal that local concave or convex micro-morphology characterized by the second order term of Taylor expansion F2, can affect the local adsorption capacity due to its effect on the distribution of surface charge and reactive sites. Moreover, the adsorbed P at different F2 here fits to a Weibull distribution, which can further define the representative average adsorption onto individual particles. A weighted average morphology factor F2a is derived to characterize the surface hete...

Phosphorus adsorption onto clay minerals and iron oxide with consideration of heterogeneous particle morphology