Perfluorinated compounds(PFCs), an emerging environmental pollutant, are environmentally persistent and bioaccumulative organic compounds that possess a toxic impact on human health and ecosystems. PFCs are distributed widely in environment media including groundwater, surface water, soil and sediment. PFCs in contaminated solid can potentially leach into groundwater. Therefore, understanding PFCs partitioning between the aqueous phase and solid phase is important for the determination of their fate and transport in the environment. In this study, the sorption equilibrium batch and kinetic experiment of PFCs were carried out to estimated the sorption coefficient(K_d) and the fraction between aqueous-solid phase partition, respectively. Sorption branches of the PFDA(Perfluoro-n-decanoic acid), PFNA(Perfluoro-n-nonanoic acid), PFOA(Perfluoro-n-octanoic acid), PFOS(Perfluoro-1-octane sulfonic acid) and PFHxS(Perfluoro-1-hexane sulfonic acid) isotherms were nearly linear, and the estimated K_d was as follow: PFDA(1.50) > PFOS(1.49) > PFNA(0.81) > PFHxS(0.45) > PFOA(0.39). The sorption kinetics of PFDA, PFNA, PFOA, PFOS and PFHxS onto soil were described by a biexponential adsorption model, suggesting that a fast transport into the surface layer of soil, followed by two-step diffusion transport into the internal water and/or organic matter of soil. Shorter times(<20hr) were required to achieve equilibrium and fraction for adsorption on solid(F₁, F₂) increased with perfluorinated carbon chain length and sulfonate compounds in this study. Overall, our results suggested that not only the perfluorocarbon chain length, but also the terminal functional groups are important contributors to electrostatic and hydrophobic interactions between PFCs and soils, and organic matter in soils significantly affects adsorption maximum capacity than kinetic rate.

Keywords: PFCs, Adsorption, Batch test, Kinetics, Partitioning coefficient