Copper(II) and Cadmium(II) sorption onto ferrihydrite in the presence of phthalic acid: Some properties of the ternary complex

Copper, cadmium, and phthalic acid (H2Lp) adsorption by ferrihydrite was examined for binary and ternary systems. In binary systems adsorption was well reproduced using the diffuse layer model (DLM), and H2Lp adsorption was analogous to that of inorganic diprotic acids in terms of the relationship between the adsorption constants and acidity constants. In ternary systems H2Lp caused both the enhancement (due to ternary complex formation) and inhibition (due to solution complex formation) of Cu2+ and Cd2+ sorption depending on the conditions. The DLM could only describe the effect of H2Lp on metal ion sorption by including ternary complexes of the form FeOHMLp(0), where FeOH is a surface site and M is Cu or Cd. The relationship between binary metal adsorption constants and the ternary complex adsorption constants from this and previous studies suggest several properties of ternary complexes. First, ternary complex structures on both ferrihydrite and goethite are either the same or similar. Second, those cations having large adsorption constants also have large equilibrium constants for ternary complex formation. Third ligands forming stronger solution complexes with cations will also form stronger surface ternary complexes though, because of the strong solution complex, they will not necessarily enhance cation adsorption.