[Ion specificity during ion exchange equilibrium in natural clinoptilolite]

Zeolites have been widely applied in soil improvement and environment protection. The study on ion specificity during ion exchange equilibrium is of important significance for better use of zeolites. The maximum adsorption capacities of alkali ions during ion exchange equilibrium in the clinoptilolite showed obvious specificity. For alkali metal ions with equivalent valence, the differences in adsorption capacity increased with the decrease of ionic concentration. These results cannot be well explained by the classical theories including coulomb force, ionic size, hydration, dispersion force, classic induction force and surface complexation. We found that the coupling of polarization effects resulted from the quantum fluctuation of diverse alkali metal ions and electric field near the zeolite surface should be the primary reason for specific ion effect during ion exchange in zeolite. The result of this coupling effect was that the difference in the ion dipole moment increased with the increase of surface potential, which further expanded the difference in the adsorption ability between zeolite surface and ions, resulting in different ion exchange adsorption ability at the solid/liquid interface. Due to the high surface charge density of zeolite, ionic size also played an important role in the distribution of ions in the double diffuse layer, which led to an interesting result that distinct differences in exchange adsorption ability of various alkali metal ions were only detected at high surface potential (the absolute value was greater than 0.2 V), which was different from the ion exchange equilibrium result on the surface with low charge density.