Introduction: Pollution of soil and water environment by release of heavy metals is of great concerns of the last decades. Sorption of heavy metals by low cost materials is considered as an inexpensive and efficient method used for removal of heavy metals from soil-water systems. The presence of different ligands with various complexing abilities can change the sorption properties of heavy metals and their fate in the environment as well. In order to assess the effect of citrate and arginine as natural organic ligands in soil environment, in a batch study we investigated the effects of these ligands on equilibrium sorption of nickel to sepiolite and calcite minerals and also kinetics of Ni sorption by these minerals.
Materials and Methods: Minerals used in this study included sepiolite from Yazd (Iran) and pure calcite (Analytical grade, Merck, Germany). Sepiolite was purified, saturated with Ca using 0.5 M CaCl2, powdered in a mortar and sieved by non-metal 230 mesh standard wire sieve. For equilibrium sorption study, in a 50-mL polyethylene centrifuge tube, 0.3 g sample of each mineral was suspended in 30 mL of a 0.01 M CaCl2 solution containing 0, 5, 10, 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100 mg L-1 Ni (NiCl2) and containing zero (as control) or 0.1 mmol L-1 citrate or arginine ligands.