Adsorption capacity of nitrate from artificial fertilizers and soil on pyrophyllite

The study at hand presents for the first time the use of pyrophyllite as adsorbent for nitrate removal from soil and artificial fertilizers. A series of column and batch adsorption experiments were conducted to examine the effects of the adsorbent’s various parameters, the contact time, pH of the solution, the initial concentration of nitrate, concentration and adsorbent granulometry. Pyrophyllite fractions of 0.25, 0.50 and 1.00 mm had very similar pH values of aqueous suspensions and were in the weakly basic range. Nitrate adsorption capacity on pyrophyllite expressed by recovery factor values ranges from 93.14 to 99.77%. High recovery factor values from 90.44 to 97.45% for 1, 3, 5 and 8 mL min −1 flow rates were obtained using all pyrophyllite fractions. Nitrate removal was very effective by the contact time of 1 and 2 h, and the recovery factor values were in the range of 90.38–91.47% and 92.15–93.18% for a contact time of 1 h and 2 h, respectively. In addition, elution of nitrate from pyrophyllite was performed using the following solution with different pH values: 1.70 (synthetic gastric juice), 6.40 (rainwater), 7.70 (distilled water), 9.30 and 12.50 (NaOH solution). Elution was very low for all used solutions and was the highest at the pH 9.30. The results show that the use of pyrophyllite for removal of nitrate from artificial fertilizers and soil was an adequate approach because it has a high nitrate adsorption capacity, while the nitrate elution from the pyrophyllite was very low.