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Performance and mechanism of phosphorus adsorption removal from wastewater by a Ce-Zr-Al composite adsorbent

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Abstract

With the increasingly serious eutrophication of global water bodies and the strict discharge standards of tail water in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), there is an urgent technology need for efficient deep phosphorus removal from wastewater. A composite cerium-based adsorbent (Ce-Zr-Al) was synthesized by coprecipitation method for the adsorption of low concentration phosphorus in water. The performance of the Ce-Zr-Al composite adsorbent was explored, and the mechanism was also revealed through the analyses including SEM, BET, XPS, and FT-IR. The results showed that the composite adsorbent had excellent phosphorus removal performance. The phosphorus removal rate reached up to 92.6%, and the phosphorus concentration in effluent was less than 0.074 mg/L. The phosphate adsorption capacity of saturation was 73.51 mg/g. The adsorption process of phosphate was in accordance with pseudo-second-order kinetic model and Langmuir model. In addition, the composite adsorbent had a high zero potential point (pH PZC= 8) and a wide range of pH application. After the repeated desorption for 10 times in NaOH solution, the composite adsorbent still maintained good adsorbability (adsorption rate > 94%). The ligand exchange and electrostatic adsorption played the main role for the phosphorus removal from water using the composite adsorbent.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Center for Low Carbon Technology of Water Environment, School of Environment and Natural Resources, Renmin University of China, 59 Zhongguancun Street, Haidian District, Beijing, 100872, China

    Yijin Wang, Guo-hua Liu, Junli Yuan, Qiangang Li, Lu Qi & Hongchen Wang

Authors
  1. Yijin Wang
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  2. Guo-hua Liu
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  3. Junli Yuan
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  4. Qiangang Li
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  5. Lu Qi
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  6. Hongchen Wang
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Contributions

Wang Yijin (first author): conceptualization, experiment, formal analysis, writing—original draft, software, and visualization. Liu Guohua (corresponding author): conceptualization, funding acquisition, resources, supervision, and writing—review and editing. Yuan Junli: investigation and writing—review and editing. Li Qiangang: resources and supervision. Qi Lu: conceptualization, methodology, and supervision. Wang Hongchen: conceptualization, methodology, and supervision.

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Correspondence to Guo-hua Liu.

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Wang, Y., Liu, Gh., Yuan, J. et al. Performance and mechanism of phosphorus adsorption removal from wastewater by a Ce-Zr-Al composite adsorbent. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 79258–79268 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-27894-2

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