Mobility of polivinylpyrrolidone coated silver nanoparticles in tropical soils

Experiments in saturated soil columns were performed to investigate the transport and retention of 25 nm and 75 nm silver nanoparticles stabilized with polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP-AgNPs) in two Brazilian soils (sandy and sandy-clay). The normalized concentration of the PVP-AgNPs was obtained through a flow injection analysis method based on the surface plasmon ressonance effect of the metallic nanoparticles. The use of the ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy (UV-Vis) allows a rapid and low-cost analysis. The obtained breakthrough curves (BCs) were modeled with a deterministic model of solute transport in steady conditions of water flow and considering two regions of non-physical equilibrium; this model allowed the determination of the hydrodynamic parameters. It was found that the process occurs in condition of non-equilibrium, with a low mass transfer for larger NP, and that the process is predominantly advective and affected by the pore size of the soil packed in the columns. The BCs for PVP-AgNPs obtained by UV-Vis spectroscopy were compared with the BCs obtained by ICP-MS and with BCs of the bromide anion, confirming that the nanoparticles have a low retention and few modifications when transported through the soil column. These PVP-AgNPs are highly mobile and can be transported through the studied tropical soils, representing a potential environmental problem, due to the possibility of these materials reaching groundwater. On the contrary, the conservative behavior of PVP-AgNPs in the studied tropical soils, indicates its potential use as tracers, substituting the bromide anion which has been demonstrated to be not a good tracer in the same conditions.