Co-transport of arsenic and micro/nano-plastics in saturated soil

Contaminants can co-exist and migrate together in the environment, causing complex (and sometimes unexpected) transport dynamics which challenge the efficient remediation of individual contaminants. The co-transport dynamics, however, remained obscure for some contaminants, such as arsenic and micro/nano-plastics (MNPs). To fill this knowledge gap, this study explored the co-transport dynamics of arsenic and MNP particles in saturated soil by combining laboratory experiments and stochastic model analysis. Isothermal adsorption and sand column transport experiments showed that the adsorption of arsenic by MNP particles followed the Freundlich model, with a maximum adsorption of 2.425 mg/g for the MNP particles with a diameter of 100 nm. In the presence of MNP particles, the efflux concentration of arsenic ions declined due to adsorption, where the decline rate decreased with the increasing MNP size and increased with the increasing adsorption capacity. Experimental results also showed that the 100 nm nano-plastic particles prohibited arsenic transport in saturated sand columns, while the 5 μm microplastics enhanced arsenic transport due to electrostatic adsorption and media pore plugging. A tempered time fractional advective-dispersion equation was then proposed to quantify the observed breakthrough curves of arsenic. The results showed that this model can reliably capture the co-transport behavior of arsenic with MNPs in the saturated soil with all coefficients of determination over 0.97, and particularly, the small MNP particles facilitated anomalous transport of arsenic. This study therefore improved the understanding and quantification of the co-transport of arsenic and MNPs in soil.