Study of adsorption phenomena ongoing onto clinoptilolite with the immobilized interfaces

Abstract

The development of innovative clean-up technologies remains a challenge as current procedures have many limitations, such as being expensive, concentration or pollutant specific, and many others. Natural zeolite of clinoptilolite type was beneficiated with surfactant octadecylammonium and alginate biopolymers using the sol-gel method. Carbonization process in pyrolysis chamber combusted organic waste materials and reaching the maximum temperature of 700°C was used for the surface carbonization, respectively.

Resulted zeolite based products were analyzed by FTIR, TG, DTA and examined on the selected aqueous pollutants removal using the conventional laboratory adsorption experiments. The ability of ODA and alginate linked zeolite of clinoptilolite type to form complexes with anions (such as nitrate, sulphate, chloride and phosphate) and to remove them from contaminated waters was validated. Carbon deposition onto clinoptilolite surface originated from the pyrolytic carbon-rich waste combustion simulated the new zeolite based hybrid to active coke, adsorption efficiency of which towards phenol was approved. Thermogravimetric analyses of the advanced zeolite-based adsorbents were accomplished to find out how temperature resistant are the novel zeolite based materials in respect to the original, untreated one. While the native clinoptilolite indicated according to DTA analysis one broad endothermic response around 100–130°C, resulted from the loss of adsorbed water, by the ODA-modified clinoptilolite was except this DTA peak, the broad exothermic response started from 370 up to 560°C observed. This DTA profile is assumed to record a slowly breakdown of attached ODA surfactant and sequential loss of mass due to continual heating of sample under elevated temperature.