Tzou, Yu-MinYu-MinTzouSHAN-LI WANGLiu, Jen-ChyiJen-ChyiLiuHuang, Ying-YingYing-YingHuangChen, Jen-HshuanJen-HshuanChen2018-09-102018-09-102008-08-01https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/39849094760?origin=resultslisthttp://scholars.lib.ntu.edu.tw/handle/123456789/338955Humic acid (HA) is one of the major components of soil organic matter. It strongly affects the sorption behavior of organic and inorganic contaminants in soils. To obtain a better understanding of the interactions of contaminants with HA, a repeated extraction technique has been applied to a peat soil to obtain HA fractions with varying aliphaticity and aromaticity, which were subsequently correlated to the sorption properties of 2,4,6-trichlorophenol (TCP). HA fractions were extracted repeatedly using an alkaline solution and each HA fraction was separated into two portions with an air-drying or re-suspending (denoted as RSHAs) process. Solid-state 13C NMR and elemental analysis demonstrated that the aromaticity and polarity of HAs decreased with extractions. Kinetic results indicated that air-dried HAs exhibited two-step first order sorption behavior with a rapid stage followed by a slower stage. The slower sorption is attributed to the diffusion of 2,4,6-TCP in the condensed aromatic domains of HAs. Conversely, sorption of 2,4,6-TCP on RSHAs was extremely rapid and could not be fitted with any kinetic model. For air-dried HAs the sorption capacity (Koc) was weakly correlated with the chemical compositions of HAs. However, a positive trend between Koc and aromaticity was observed for RSHAs. Compared with the results of air-dried HAs with their counterparts of RSHAs, it is therefore concluded that air-drying may alter the structure of HAs through artificially creating a more condensed domain in HAs. The structural alternation may result in an incorrect interpretation of the relationship between sorption capacity and chemical composition of HAs and a misjudgment of the transport behavior of 2,4,6-TCP in soils and sediments.246-TrichlorophenolAliphaticityAromaticityLinear sorptionNonlinear sorptionSorption isothermRemoval of 2,4,6-trichlorophenol from a solution by humic acids repeatedly extracted from a peat soiljournal article10.1016/j.jhazmat.2007.07.0472-s2.0-39849094760