THE EFFECT OF DISSOLVED LIGANDS ON THE SORPTION OF CU(II) BY CA-MONTMORILLONITE

The effects of three organic ligands on the adsorption of copper on Ca-montmorillonite were studied. The results indicate that these effects include three different processes: 1) Enhanced uptake of positively charged copper-ligand complexes by ion-exchange. 2) Formation of ternary surface complexes involving surface aluminol groups. 3) Inhibited uptake due to competition between the surface ligands and the dissolved ligands for dissolved copper. Ethylenediamine promotes copper uptake by ion-exchange at low pH but tends to suppress adsorption at aluminol groups by ligand competition at high pH. The same mechanisms are operative for beta-alanine; however, the uptake of Cu(beta-ala)+ by ion-exchange is not promoted by the attached ligand. The influence of malonate includes both ligand competition and formation of ternary complexes. A quantitative interpretation based on the surface complexation model using the least-squares programs FITEQL (Westall, 1982) and GRFIT (Ludwig, 1992) is presented. The obtained equilibrium constants are listed in Tables 2b and 3.