Clay minerals have been used in medicinal applications since Aboriginal times (Carretaro, 2002; Wilson, 2003). Clay poultices are used to heal wounds; people eat clays to coat stomach linings and soothe indigestion; animals eat clay containing trace elements (e.g., As) that can kill worms. The reasons that various clay minerals are effective as medicines may be as variable as the ailment, but b...

Composites based on high density polyethylene (HDPE), pine flour, and organic clay were made by melt compounding and then injection molding. The influence of clay on crystallization behavior, mechanical properties, water absorption, and thermal stability of HDPE/pine composites was investigated. The HDPE/pine composites containing exfoliated clay were made by a two-step melt compounding procedu...

Broadband electromagnetic frequency or time domain sensor techniques present high potential for quantitative water content monitoring in porous media. Prior to in situ application, the impact of the relationship between the broadband electromagnetic properties of the porous material (clay-rock) and the water content on the frequency or time domain sensor response is required. For this purpose, ...

Second harmonic generation (SHG) is applied for the first time to study the surfaces of clay particles. An SHG signal was detected from an aqueous suspension of disk-shaped montmorillonite clay particles of 0.5 μm diameter and 0.01 μm thickness. The origin of the SHG signal is the polarization of water molecules by surface charges located in the edge region of the clay particles. On addition of...

A new class of organic-inorganic hybrid aerogels having small pores and narrow pore size distribution are synthesized from well-dispersed clay platelets in water as base catalyst. Clay-catalyzed organic gels have strong advantage in controlling nanopore structure as well as reducing drying shrinkage by reinforcing the organic network with inorganic platelets.

In this work, we demonstrate the successful incorporation of pure fullerene from solution into two-dimensional layered aluminosilicate minerals. Pure fullerenes are insoluble in water and neutral in terms of charge, hence they cannot be introduced into the clay galleries by ion exchange or intercalation from water solution. To overcome this bottleneck, we organically modified the clay with quat...

[1] To understand the role of hydrated clay minerals in active fault systems, a humidity chamber connected to an X-ray diffractometer was used to determine the adsorption of water onto and/or into the crystal structure of smectite. This new type of analysis was carried out under specific temperature and humidity conditions, using powdered clay size fractions (< 2 mm) of rock samples from the Sa...

[1] We report on laboratory experiments examining the effect of hydration state on the frictional properties of simulated clay and quartz fault gouge. We tested four mixtures of Ca-montmorillonite and quartz (100, 70, 50, and 30% montmorillonite) at four hydration states: dry (<4.50 wt% water), one water interlayer equivalent (4.5–8.7 wt% water), two layers (8.7–16.0 wt% water), and three layer...

In temperate European climates, the season of peak water demand by vegetation (summer) is out of phase with the season of greatest rainfall (winter). This results in seasonal fluctuations in soil water content and, in clay soils, associated problems of shrinking and swelling that can in turn contribute to strain-softening and progressive slope failure. This paper presents field measurements of ...

electrochemically generated iron can remove most contaminants present in water and wast water, by precipitation, adsorption, electrostatic interaction, and complex formation (generally called electrocoagulation-ec). in the present paper, pretreatment of brackish water having high total hardness (th), alkalinity (a),  and cl¯ ions, is studied by application of a dc-electrical current ot the iron...