Impact of organic matter properties on sorption domains of phenanthrene on chemically modified geosorbents and synthesized charcoals

► Two geosorbents with 4 modified forms and 3 synthesized charcoals were prepared. ► Nonpolarity and aromaticity enhance phenanthrene sorption at low concentration. ► Isotherms were fitted to Dual-Mode model and corrected by Dual-Langmuir model. ► Reciprocal of polarity index (PI−1) was better than −PI to express the nonpolarity. ► Corrected Langmuir domains significantly related to products of aromaticity and PI−1.