S. Iftekhar et al.
/ Chemosphere 204 (2018) 413e430
Fig. 3. Histogram and cumulative plot for La adsorption as a function of pH (a), dose (b), time (c) and temperature (d).
a temperature range of 303e333 K (Koochaki-Mohammadpour
et al., 2014).
Apart from a few instances, the majority of investigators re-
ported the process of La was endothermic in nature. For example,
Ramasamy et al. (2017c) in their work investigated the effect of
temperature from 25 to 60  C. The rise in temperature positively
impacted the adsorption process and the La removal efficiency was
significantly increased in case of Acac modified silica gel. In addi-
tion to this, it was also evident from the authors' works that the
temperature largely impacted the HREE adsorption process in
comparison to LREE (e.g., La) adsorption process (Ramasamy et al.,
2017c, 2018a, 2018b). The increase in adsorption with the rise in
temperature might be due to the formation of new exchangeable
sites, pore enlargement, diffusion across energy barrier, increased
rate of sorption and transport against energy barrier (Hashemian
et al., 2013). Likewise, the enthalpy values obtained for CL-Zn/Al
LDH and CLN/SiO2 nanocomposites suggests the chemisorption
process for La(III) (Iftekhar et al., 2017d; c). The results also suggest
that the randomness at the solid-liquid interface increased during
the adsorption of La(III) on CLN/SiO2 (Iftekhar et al., 2017c).
4.5. Effect of competing ions
The removal efficiency of La is greatly influenced by the pres-
ence of co-existing ions in solution leading to competitive
adsorption on the adsorbent surface (Zhang et al., 2016). In recent
years, many research groups reported the effect of co-existing ions
on La adsorption. For example, Iftekhar et al. (2017d) investigated
that the presence of 10 fold concentration of Naþ, Kþ, Ca2þ, Mg2þ,
Al3þ resulted in a decrease of 10% La adsorption on CL-Zn/Al LDH
421
(Iftekhar et al., 2017d). Similarly, La adsorption on CLN/SiO2
decreased considerably when present in the same system along
with Naþ, Kþ, Ca2þ, Mg2þ, Al3þ, probably due to same ionic charge
of Al3þ (Iftekhar et al., 2017c). The influence on La adsorption on
P507 magnetic silica nanocomposite was studied by Wu et al.
(2013) in the presence of alkali metal ions viz. Naþ, Kþ, Liþ, Ca2þ,
Mg2þ, Ni2þ, Co2þ. The removal of La was not affected by the
monovalent ions, however, a slight decrease was observed due to
divalent ions which were attributed to high ionic strength (Wu
et al., 2013). Similar observations were made with activated
carbon-silica composites where the removal of La was not inhibited
in the presence of high water salinity (Naþ) but in the presence of
water hardness ions (Ca2þ and Mg2þ) and organic/oil compound
(e.g., heptane) (Ramasamy et al., 2018b). In another study, the
presence of monovalent and divalent cations and anions was
studied and results showed a high selectivity of AC-DETADHBA
towards La along with competing ions (Wang et al., 2016a).
Similar results had been reported by Tadjarodi et al. (2015) and
Wang et al. (2016b) as well.
It was reported in the literature that the hindrance of competing
ions with regards to La adsorption could be largely influenced by
the process pH. For instance, recovery of La from the acidic solu-
tions posed challenges from the competing ions such as Fe3þ, quite
common in industrial waste waters or mine waters (Ramasamy
et al., 2018c). At lower pHs, besides Fe3þ, interference from noble
elements and palladium group elements such as Au3þ, Pd3þ and
Pt3þ, could be fairly excessive. On the other hand, at higher pH, ions
such as Mn2þ, Al3þ, Cd2þ, Cu2þ, Co2þ and Zn2þ could deter the
adsorption process of La (Ramasamy et al., 2017a, 2018a). It should
also be mentioned that poor La adsorption was commonly recorded