[Influence of reaction time of urea hydrolysis-based co-precipitation on the structure of ZnAl layered double hydroxides and the phosphate adsorption].

A series of ZnAl layered double hydroxides (LDHs) were prepared by urea hydrolysis-based homogeneous co-precipitation for studying their structure and phosphate adsorption capacities. The results show that all the samples exhibited a typical layered structure as the reaction time extended from 12 h to 96 h, whereas Zn/Al molar ratio in the ZnAls decreased from 2.06 to 0.70 and the specific surface area markedly increased to be 7.6-fold higher than that of ZnAl-12. Phosphate adsorption capacity of the ZnAl was in general increased gradually with the reaction time extension, which can be attributed to the surface area rising as well as the increased positive charge of LDHs layer caused by a higher proportion of Al. This reveals that physicochemical adsorption on LDHs surface would have played an important role during the phosphate adsorption. With a reaction time of 24 h, a high amount of exchangeable interlayer anions was observed, giving rise to a highest phosphate uptake of 34.1 mg x g(-1) by the ZnAl-24. It indicates the ion exchange was another major pathway for the phosphate removal. For all the ZnAls with different reaction times, the phosphate adsorption isotherms fit well with Langmuir-type equations; the adsorption kinetics followed pseudo-second-order models.