Modeling the kinetics of the competitive adsorption and desorption of glyphosate and phosphate on goethite and gibbsite and in soils

The herbicide glyphosate and inorganic phosphate compete for adsorption sites in soil and on oxides. This competition may have consequences for the transport of both compounds in soil and hence for the contamination of groundwater. We present and evaluate six simple, kinetic models that only take time and concentrations into account. Three of the models were found suitable to describe the competition in soil. These three models all assumed both competitive and additive adsorption, but with different equations used to describe the adsorption. For the oxides, three additional models assuming only competitive adsorption were also found suitable. This is in accordance with the observation that the adsorption in soil is both competitive and additive, whereas the adsorption on oxides is competitive. All models can be incorporated in transport models such as the convection-dispersion equation.