The sorption kinetics and isotherms of sulfamethoxazole with polyethylene microplastics.
Microplastics and sulfamethoxazole coexist ubiquitously in the marine environment, and microplastics tend to sorb organic pollutants from the surrounding environment. Here, the sorption kinetics and isotherms of sulfamethoxazole on polyethylene (PE) microplastics closely fitted a pseudo-second-order model (R2 = 0.98) and linear model (R2 = 0.99), respectively, indicating that the sorption process was partition-dominant interaction. The main binding mechanism was possibly the van der Waals interaction for hydrophilic sulfamethoxazole onto hydrophobic PE microplastics. The effects of pH, dissolved organic matter and salinity on sorption behavior were also studied. The sorption behavior of sulfamethoxazole on PE microplastics was not significantly influenced by pH and salinity, probably because the electrostatic repulsion played a minor role. In addition, the negligible effect of dissolved organic matter was attributed to the greater affinity of sulfamethoxazole to PE microplastics than to dissolved organic matter. Our results demonstrated that PE microplastics may serve as a carrier for sulfamethoxazole in the aquatic environment.
['Xu|Baile|B|', 'Liu|Fei|F|', 'Brookes|Philip C|PC|', 'Xu|Jianming|J|']
D000327:Adsorption D006863:Hydrogen-Ion Concentration D057927:Hydrophobic and Hydrophilic Interactions D007700:Kinetics D008956:Models, Chemical D020959:Polyethylene D054712:Salinity D055672:Static Electricity D013420:Sulfamethoxazole D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical
Sorption Sulfamethoxazole Microplastics pH Dissolved organic matter Salinity