Response of Phosphate Adsorption by Acid Soils to the Use of Electrolyte

The presence of electrolyte in the solution, increases the amount of adsorbed anions. This increase, mainly depends on the kind of electrolyte, the concentration in the solution and the pH of treatment. In this work the process of phosphate adsorption in acid soils (Dystric subgroups of Inceptisols and Entisols) with and without use of electrolyte, was studied in order to find the real adsorption capacity of soils and the equations that fit to the adsorption data. It was found out that the shape of the isotherms obtained without electrolyte was different from that with electrolyte. The amount of the adsorbed anions was higher in the later case. The Freundlich equation gave a good fit to the isotherm data and the exponent of Freundlich equation was correlated with some properties of the soils.