Interactions of phosphate and dissolved organic carbon with lanthanum modified bentonite: Implications for the inactivation of phosphorus in lakes.

Lanthanum-modified bentonite (LMB) is a widely used phosphorus-inactivating agent in lakes. However, dissolved organic carbon (DOC) exists ubiquitously in lakes, and its influence on phosphate binding is still not adequately understood. Our results showed that both phosphate and DOC can be adsorbed by LMB. The Langmuir adsorption maxima of phosphate and DOC were 9.06 mg P/g and 5.31 mg C/g, respectively, generating a C/P molar ratio ∼1.5. When phosphate and DOC coexisted at this ratio, the adsorption of phosphate was not influenced by DOC and vice versa. However, the phosphate capture by LMB was significantly reduced by raising the ratio above ∼9, and the reduction was increased with increasing the ratio. Once adsorbed by LMB, phosphate was essentially not desorbed by DOC, while adsorbed DOC can be mostly liberated by phosphate. It is deemed that phosphate can interact preferentially with La on LMB. However, DOC can still be adsorbed by LMB, even after LMB was saturated with phosphate, which was attributed to (i) the high coordination capacity of La; (ii) the interaction of DOC with the hydroxyl group(s) of the adsorbed phosphate via hydrogen bonding; and (iii) the interaction of DOC with the La sites unoccupied by phosphate. We proposed that LMB can be applied in the season (time) when the DOC/P ratio in lakes is low enough to facilitate the adsorption of phosphate, which will no longer be released into water, even after the C/P ratio is raised later.