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Adsorption Capacity of Microplastics on Sb in Water
Summary
Laboratory experiments showed that five common microplastic types—PP, PE, PS, PET, and PVC—all adsorb antimony, a toxic heavy metal, from water, with polystyrene showing the highest uptake capacity. This confirms that microplastics act as vectors for hazardous metals in the environment, potentially concentrating toxins and delivering them to organisms that ingest the particles.
Antimony is a global pollutant and one of the most concerned toxic metal elements in the world. Due to the influence of human activities, a large number of Sb-containing pollutants have been discharged into the environment, resulting in the gradual increase of Sb content in the environment, endangering the ecosystem and human health. Plastic products are widely used in human daily life, making a large number of microplastics enter the environment and form new pollution. Microplastics often combine with other organic and inorganic pollutants in the environment and may affect the transport of these pollutants in the environment. In this paper, five kinds of microplastics (polypropylene PP, polyethylene PE, polystyrene PS, polyethylene terephthalate PET and polyvinyl chloride PVC) were used to adsorb Sb (III) in simulated wastewater to explore the adsorption mechanism, adsorption efficiency and influencing factors of Sb in water by microplastics. The results showed that cations and anions influence the adsorption effect of microplastics on Sb. The kinetic fitting curve showed that the adsorption process of Sb by the five types of microplastics reaches equilibrium within 24 h. Additionally, the maximum adsorption capacities of PP, PE, PS, PET, and PVC at 25℃ were 0.37, 0.21, 0.68, 0.40, and 0.20 mg·g−1, respectively. The Langmuir and Freundlich models indicated that the adsorption of the five microplastics on Sb was dominated by monolayer adsorption. The adsorption thermodynamics experiment showed that the adsorption reactions of PP, PE, PS, PET, and PVC were spontaneous. With the increase of temperature, the adsorption spontaneity gradually increased. The adsorption reactions of the five microplastics were endothermic, indicating that increased temperature is conducive to the adsorption process.