Thermal Properties of Some Turkish Peloids and Clay Minerals for Their Use in Pelotherapy

The thermal properties such as specific heat capacity and heat dissipation of peloids play an important role in therapeutic applications. Therefore, these properties were determined on the peloids samples taken from spas where peloid applications are used in Turkey. In addition, some pure clay minerals were investigated to determine their suitability as possible constituents of therapeutic peloids and to make recommendations for preparing the most usable peloids for thermal therapy. For this aim, the mineralogical and thermal properties of samples were investigated using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Differential Scanning Calorimeter (DSC). The mineralogical compositions of the peloid samples are not homogenous, and their clay mineral content is approximately 60%, and the most abundant clay mineral is calcium montmorillonite. The cooling time of peloids are between 20 and 25 minutes, which is suitable for therapy and thus these peloids are suitable for using in health problems requiring heat treatment. The samples have favorable heat dissipation capacity and partially cooling kinetics. Specific heat capacity of the peloid samples is partially appropriate for heat therapy and these values range from 0.60 to 1.41 J/g∙ ̊C, and partially high in peloids with high smectite content. The pure sepiolite samples have higher heat dissipation properties than those of other clay minerals especially illites and kaolinites. Ca-montmorillonite and kaolinite have the lowest specific heat values while sepiolite samples have higher values. Sepiolite and partly Na-Ca-montmorillonite are more appropriate than the other studied clay minerals as a peloid constituent especially for therapy of musculoskeletal pain.