Preparation of Highly Selective Phosphorus Adsorbent from Zircon Sand (ZrSiO4) by Mechanochemical Treatment

In this study, it is attempted to prepare the adsorbent with highly selective phosphorus adsorption material from zircon sand by a simple mechanochemical treatment. The phosphorus adsorption property of the products obtained under various mechanochemical treatment conditions were investigated by various phosphorus adsorption experiments. With increasing the time of mechanochemical treatment, the phosphorus adsorption amount of the product increased within 10 min, regardless the ball diameter. The phosphorus adsorption amount of the product was about 2.5 times larger than that of the raw zircon sand. The adsorption amount of phosphorus increased with decreasing the pH value at the equilibrium, and was about 3.5 times larger at pH 1 than at pH 7. The product showed the same adsorption amount in Imari bay seawater as that in the aqueous solution at pH 7, which means that phosphorus can be selectively adsorbed on the product in the solution with high salt concentration. The adsorption isotherm at pH 1 was found to applicable to Langmuir model rather than Freundlich model. The maximum calculated adsorption amount was 0.034 mmol g. XRD and FT-IR analyses of the product did not change greatly by mechanochemical treatment, except the Zr-O binding of zircon sand.