Transport of palladium in urban water environments and its simulation: a case study of Haikou, Hainan Province, China

ABSTRACT

Palladium (Pd) is widely used in the production of automotive catalytic converters that serve to reduce toxic emissions from motor vehicles. The aim of this study was to explore the transport of Pd in the urban water environment. The results showed that the amounts of transported Pd in the pollution chain followed the order of rainfall runoff > estuary > receiving water body > wet deposition, indicating that rainfall runoff was the main source of Pd input. The amount of transported Pd might not depend entirely on the short-term Pd inputs from rainfall runoff and wet deposition. In the estuary, the phenomenon that Pd transport was dominated by suspended matter appeared for the first time in the entire pollution chain. Acertain amount of the inputted Pd was absorbed and accumulated in the urban water environment so that the inputted Pd was not completely outputted.

KEYWORDS:

• Palladium
• urban water environment
• pollution chain
• transport
• simulation

Acknowledgements

We thank the 2014 undergraduates at the College of Geography and Environmental Science, Hainan Normal University, Chao Lan, Changdong Zou, Xing Yang, Linsheng He, Qianqian Fu, Mengchen Shen; 2015 undergraduates Lin Wang, Siying Wang; and other students, who helped complete the sampling work.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interests.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [41867060] and the Key Research, Development Program of Hainan Province [ZDYF2019131].