The problem associated with multi-metals contaminated soils has generated increasingly more attention. Thus, it is necessary within the field to study the mutual influence of environmental factors on competitive adsorption. The majority of studies carried out to date have concentrated on the variation of adsorption capacity or the removal efficiency, with only a single factor changed (including pH, ionic strength, and metal concentration). However, the interaction effect among various environmental factors was ignored in these studies. The purpose of this study was mainly aimed toward the investigation of the interaction of two influential factors, as well as the influential degree of each factor (such as the initial pH, ionic strength, initial metal concentration, and the competitive metal concentration) on competitive adsorption using the response surface method. These results demonstrated that the influential degree of each factor studied on the competitive adsorption of Zn2+ and Cd2+ followed the trend of having the initial concentration of the target metal > initial pH > concentration of competitive metal > ionic strength. When the metal concentration was held constant, we found that the competitive adsorption of Zn2+ initially increased, followed by a decrease with increasing initial pH. However, this was found to change minimally with increasing ionic strength. When the initial pH or ionic strength was held constant, the competitive ability was observed to increase with increasing Zn2+ concentration. However, with increasing Zn2+ or Cd2+ concentrations, the variation degree of the competitive adsorption was found to become smaller. These results provide novel information toward a better understanding of the effect of multifactors on the competitive adsorption of Zn2+ and Cd2+.
