The population of the world is increasing day by day and expected to reach 9.7 billion by the year 2050. The rapid human population growth coupled with increasing consumption of foods creates unprecedented pressure on soils. The overuse of the agricultural land, and also the use of various agricultural chemicals such as fertilizers, pesticides, etc., will lead to unsustainable degradation of soils that is not well understood. Furthermore, the molecular-level interactions of compounds added to soils, such as agricultural chemicals, are not very well known. The complex and heterogeneous nature of the soils, which varies from location to location, environment, and human activities, makes the study of the soils very challenging. Therefore, synthesizing a natural mimics of soil, referred to as Engineered Soil Surrogates (ESSs), to relate their bulk properties with structural compositions is anticipated to overcome these limitations. ESSs that are polymeric in nature are envisioned to be synthesized by atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP). These polymeric ESSs should consist of the following components: silica particles as mineral, linear hydrocarbons of varying chain length to represent lipids, oligo(O-aryl) groups consisting of hydroxy, methoxy, and acetyl substituted aromatic groups to mimic lignin, and cyclic glucose oligomers (O-alkyl) to represent polysaccharide residues of soil organic matter (SOM) present in the soils. Therefore, the primary goal of this study is to synthesize a series of ESSs and compare the sorption behavor with that of the real soils such as Pahokee peat.

Comparative studies of the sorption behavior of agricultural chemical with engineered soil surrogates (ESSs) and real soils

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

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