title: Measuring and modeling adsorption of PAHs to carbon nanotubes over a six order of magnitude wide concentration range.
abstract: Understanding the interactions between organic contaminants and carbon nanomaterials is essential for evaluating the materials' potential environmental impact and their application as sorbent. Although a great deal of work has been published in the past years, data are still limited in terms of compounds, concentrations, and conditions investigated. We applied a passive sampling method employing polyoxymethylene (POM-SPE) to gain a better understanding of the interactions between polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and multiwalled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) over a 6 orders of magnitude wide concentration range. In the low-concentration range (pg-ng L(-1)), sorption of phenanthrene and pyrene was linear on a nonlogarithmic scale. Here, sorption could thus be described using a single sorption coefficient. Isotherm fits over the entire concentration range showed that (i) monolayer sorption models described the data very well, and (ii) the CNTs sorption capacity was directly related to their surface area. Sorption coefficients for 13 PAHs (11 of which have not been reported to date) were also measured at environmentally relevant low concentrations. No competition seemed to occur in the low-concentration range and sorption affinity was directly related to the solubility of the subcooled liquid of the compounds.
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Geosciences, University of Vienna, Althanstrasse 14, 1090 Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Melanie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kah
authors.forename: Xiaoran
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Michiel T O
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Jonker
authors.forename: Thilo
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Hofmann
mesh_terms: D000327:Adsorption; D002498:Centrifugation; D004785:Environmental Pollutants / Q000737:chemistry*; D008956:Models, Chemical; D008958:Models, Molecular; D015233:Models, Statistical; D037742:Nanotubes, Carbon / Q000737:chemistry*; D011084:Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons / Q000737:chemistry*; D012117:Resins, Synthetic
chemical_list: D004785:Environmental Pollutants; D037742:Nanotubes, Carbon; D011084:Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons; D012117:Resins, Synthetic; C010102:delrin