ABSTRACT
Hydroquinone (HQ) is the most important hydroxy aromatic compound which is produced on a large scale. Understanding its fate in the environment is therefore of primary importance to prevent its migration in the soil and/or the contamination of the aquatic ecosystems. Here we present a column based method to investigate the physicochemical processes controlling the removal from the aqueous phase and the adsorption onto natural quartz sand (NQS), of organic pollutant such as HQ molecules. We will focus on the interactions that occur between the organic pollutant and the NQS substrate. Thus, column reactors filled with NQS were used to investigate the influence of physicochemical parameters such as the ionic strength, the pH, the flow rate, and the nature of the electrolyte cation, on the HQ adsorption from water onto NQS substrate. The data indicate that, when divalent instead of monovalent cations, are present in the effluent water injection phase, and/or when the ionic strength of the effluent increases, the adsorbed HQ amount decreases. Similar decrease of the adsorbed HQ amount was also observed, at constant ionic strength, by increasing either, the pH from 3 to 9, the flow rate Q from 1 to 3 ml·mn-1, or by decreasing the HQ initial concentration, C0 from 30 to 6 mg·L-1. Further, large amount of the organic pollutant (up to 93 wt% of HQ molecules) was removed from the effluent water phase by using NQS column. The overall data seem to indicate that the adsorption of HQ molecules on the NQS surface is mainly controlled by electrostatic interaction forces occurring between the organic molecule polar groups and the inorganic matrix silanol groups.