Informatics Publishing Limited

Xiaohong Lu ¹, Zhijun Yan ¹, Xiangjuan Ma ¹, Huijun Liu ¹, Huilong Xia ¹

Affiliations
1 School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Zhejiang Gongshang University, No. 149 Jiaogong Rd., Hangzhou 310012, CN

Abstract

Tea saponin (TS) is a type of tea seed-derived natural surfactant. Two types of cadmium contaminated soils were washed with TS in batch experiments. The results showed that TS was effective for removal of cadmium from the two soils, and attained 74.5% and 64.6% of cadmium desorption by 8% of TS, respectively. The optimum concentration of TS for soil washing to remove cadmium is 4% under the consideration both of efficiency and cost. The addition of background electrolyte (NaNO₃) resulted in a significant increase of the desorption of cadmium by TS. Kinetic studies revealed that the desorption of cadmium by TS was fast, the equilibrium reached at 20 min of contact in the two tested soils. The kinetic data were fitted to the pseudosecond- order kinetic model very well. TS displayed a promising desorption capacity for cadmium in polluted soils.

Keywords

Tea Saponin, Cadmium, Desorption, Kinetic Studies.

Full Text