HETEROGENEOUS DISTRIBUTION OF COPPER IN DIFFERENT GRAIN SIZE AND DENSITY FRACTIONS OF CONTAMINATED SURFACE SEDIMENT FROM NANSI LAKE (CHINA)

Abstract

The copper (Cu) distributions and speciation in the surface sediment collected from Nansi Lake (NL) (China) were investigated by chemical and physical fractionation methods. Sediment was first fractionated into four grain size fractions (<63, 78–163, 163–280, and >280μm) in wet condition. Each fraction was then further divided into two density sub-fractions (low and heavy) by flotation in sodium-polytungstate solution (ρ=2.0g/cm3). In addition, a three-stage extraction procedure following the European Communities Bureau of Reference (BCR) protocol was applied to study the speciation distribution of Cu among grain size fractions. It was found that the speciation distributions of Cu among different grain size fractions were quite close to each other, although the total Cu concentrations were different in the individual fractions. Moreover, Cu mainly occurred in the coarser, low density, OC-rich fractions. Extractable Cu, which was dominated by reducible and oxidizable parts, occupied almost 80% of the total Cu concentration. Total Cu concentrations in grain size fractions and density sub-fractions ranged from 29.6 to 72.9 and from 21.4 to 156mg/kgdw, respectively. It was noted that low-density fractions had 4–7 times higher Cu concentrations and 5–12 times higher organic carbon (OC) content than those in high-density fractions. The results demonstrated that OC was a main factor influencing Cu distributions in either grain size or density fractionated sediment. This study suggests that the role of the Cu-rich fraction should be considered when conducting the remediation of Cu contamination in NL.