The transport of IC and Eu(Ⅲ) in quartz sand and iron-coated sand columns under various Eu(Ⅲ) concentrations was shown in
Fig. 2. For the individual transport of Eu(Ⅲ), as the invariance of adsorption sites in the column, Eu(Ⅲ) M
eff increased continuously with increasing Eu(Ⅲ) concentration in both media (Table S4 in Supporting information). However, the co-transport M
eff of Eu(Ⅲ) and IC declined simultaneously in both media at the high Eu(Ⅲ) concentration, even lower than that in individual transport of colloids (Table S3), which implied that the co-transport pattern of Eu(Ⅲ) depended greatly on the transport behaviors of IC. Previous studies on IC stability have shown that the increase of Eu(Ⅲ) concentration would not only compress the thickness of the electrical double layer of colloidal particles, but also produce a strong charge shielding effect responsible for the weak electrostatic repulsion between IC particles [
39], resulting in the deposition and blocking of Eu(Ⅲ)-attached colloids in the porous media due to the aggregated IC clusters and the enhanced physic straining [
46,
47]. Similarly, a large amount of the IC and Eu(Ⅲ) could be retained at high Na
+ concentration (Fig. S5 in Supporting information), indicating that the counter ions had analogous effects in the co-transport. Although a similar diminishing trend for the M
eff of colloids and Eu(Ⅲ) was observed in both quartz sand and iron-coated sand systems with increasing Eu(Ⅲ) concentration, the decrease of M
eff in iron-coated sand was significantly greater than that for quartz sand under all conditions owing to the extra adhesion sites (at 10 µmol/L Eu(Ⅲ) and 15 µmol/L Eu(Ⅲ), the M
eff values of Eu(Ⅲ) were 84% and 8% in the quartz sand system, respectively, whereas the values were 70% and 0% in the iron-coated sand). It suggested that the co-transport of IC and Eu(Ⅲ) in the opposite charge system was more sensitive to the counterions concentration. A plausible explanation was that the negatively charged IC cluster was preferentially retained by positively charged iron oxides, even if the cluster size was not large enough to be filtered and retarded by the pore throat in porous media. The subsequent IC retention caused by electrostatic attraction induced the pore-throat shrinkage of the porous media, which further filtered more IC-Eu(Ⅲ) hybrid complexes, resulting in more serious blocking. Therefore, synergistic effect of electrostatic interaction and colloids stability induced the stronger retention of IC-Eu(Ⅲ) complexes in the iron-coated sand system. Overall, whether the transport of Eu(Ⅲ) was facilitated or retained by IC, its M
eff for co-transport was almost identical to that of IC (Table S3). From this point of view, the co-transport behavior of Eu(Ⅲ) could be predicted by the transport patterns of colloids. Although the retardation effect of iron-coated sand on IC was not dramatic in this work, the transport of IC was indeed affected by the electrostatic interaction between IC and host media even under the favorable conditions of colloid dispersion. Wang
et al. found that the transport of biochar nanoparticles decreased significantly with increasing surface coverage of iron oxyhydroxide due to the enhanced electrostatic attraction between negatively charged biochar particles and positively charged iron oxyhydroxide [
30]. Elmelech
et al. found that the deposition kinetics of silica colloids were controlled by the density of charge heterogeneity on particle and grain surfaces, the colloid removal efficiency for the given conditions increased from 8% for the bare quartz grains to 95% for the aminosilane-modified quartz grains [
48]. Consequently, positively charged coating usually provides favorable retention sites for the negatively charged particles, implying that the positively charged permeable reactive barrier may be served as an effective strategy to control the migration behaviors of mineral colloids associated with radionuclides.