Product Description
The aim of this book is to provide an introduction to the chemistry of the solid-water
interface. Of primary interest are the important interfaces in natural systems, above
all in geochemistry, in natural waters, soils, and sediments. The processes occurring
at mineral-water, particle-water, and organism-water interfaces play critical
roles in regulating the composition and the ecology of oceans and fresh waters, in
the development of soils and the supply of plant nutrients, in preserving the integrity
of waste repositories, and in technical applications such as in water technology and
in corrosion science.
This book is a teaching book; it progresses from the simple to the more complex
and applied. It is addressed to students and researchers (chemists, geochemists,
oceanographers, limnologists, soil scientists and environmental engineers). Rather
than providing descriptive data, this book tries to stress surface chemical principles
that can be applied in the geochemistry of natural waters, soils, and sediments, and
in water technology.
Interface and colloid science has a very wide scope and depends on many
branches of the physical sciences, including thermodynamics, kinetics, electrolyte
and electrochemistry, and solid state chemistry. Throughout, this book explores one
fundamental mechanism, the interaction of solutes with solid surfaces (adsorption
and desorption). This interaction is characterized in terms of the chemical and
physical properties of water, the solute, and the sorbent. Two basic processes in
the reaction of solutes with natural surfaces are: 1) the formation of coordinative
bonds (surface complexation), and 2) hydrophobic adsorption, driven by the incompatibility
of the nonpolar compounds with water (and not by the attraction of the
compounds to the particulate surface). Both processes need to be understood to
explain many processes in natural systems and to derive rate laws for geochemical
processes.
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