Effects of lipids on the sorption of hydrophobic organic compounds on geosorbents: a case study using phenanthrene

The impact of the lipid fraction of natural geosorbents on the sorption of a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon was assessed using several experiments. In the first set of experiments phenanthrene was sorbed on a coastal sediment as well as on its humin and humic acid fractions before and after lipid extraction. Before lipid extraction, sorption shows dominantly partitioning characteristics. However, the extraction of lipids from sediment and humin drastically increases, by up to one order of magnitude, their sorption affinity for phenanthrene at low sorbate concentrations, resulting in increased isotherm nonlinearity. This effect is less pronounced for humic acids. One mechanism proposed for the increasing sorption is that lipids, despite their very low relative abundance in the sediments, can compete with phenanthrene for specific high affinity sorption sites (e.g., matrix pores and adsorption sites). This competition is not surprising considering the similar hydrophobic nature of lipids and phenanthrene. Lipids, or any non-polar molecules, could also act like plasticizers by swelling rigid domains and disrupting high affinity sites. In both cases, the removal of lipids (and extraction solvents) makes those sites available for phenanthrene. These provide alternative explanations to the previously proposed “solvent conditioning effect” believed to occur when geosorbents are treated with non-polar solvents modifying the matrix structure, an effect yet to be proven at molecular scale. To further investigate the impact of lipids on sorption, other independent experiments were performed. In a second experiment, re-addition of lipids to the extracted sediment restored the sorption isotherm linearity observed in the native material supporting the absence of irreversible extraction artifacts. However, high addition of lipids (i.e., after saturation of high affinity sites) seems to also enlarge the low affinity partitioning domain. These results are consistent with dual-mode, hole-filling, sorption models involving diffusion. In the final set of experiments, solid-state ¹⁹F-NMR using F-labeled lipids sorbed onto the sediments confirmed that lipids may be in different domains (mobile or rigid) that interact or not with phenanthrene. The possible effects of lipid removal on sorption have been overlooked and should be considered when geosorbents are pretreated.