Simulation assisted characterization of kaolinite–methanol intercalation complexes synthesized using cost-efficient homogenization method

Characterization of kaolinite-cetyltrimethylammonium chloride intercalation complex synthesized through eco-friend kaolinite-urea pre-intercalation complex

“…To our knowledge, the preparation of kaolinite-CTAC complex using U as precursor was not published before. Direct intercalation of U into kaolinite was carried out using solution [1,2,4,8,9,16,20,26,28,34,37,38], mechanochemical (co-grinding) [13, 21-23, 25-28, 31, 32, 37], and homogenization [41] techniques. These techniques resulted in high degree of intercalation, but the mechanochemical and homogenization techniques require less time and consume an order of magnitude less chemicals.…”

“…According to our recent studies, higher degree of intercalation was obtained by the homogenization method than by the solution one, and the homogenization treatment (contrary to the mechanochemical one) does not reduce the amount of the crystalline kaolinite phase and does not crack the kaolinite layers, which may cause difficulties in the formation of kaolinite nanoscrolls. Lately, we [41] applied the one-step homogenization technique to intercalate U.…”

“…From the DMSO and NMF pre-intercalates, the formation of a kaolinite-Me complex with basal spacing of 1.11-1.13 nm was established in methanol-wet state [10,12,15,19,29,30,[33][34][35][36]41], but on air-drying, a contraction down to 0.93-0.86 nm was observed [12,15,19,38,41]. Using elemental and thermal analysis results, Tunney and Detellier [7], Komori et al [15], and Matusik and Klapyta [36] calculated the values of x=0.87, x=0.36, and x=0.48, respectively, for the supposed chemical formula of In spite of the more eco-friendly behavior of U, there are only two studies reported in the literature [34,41], where the kaolinite-U pre-intercalate was used to synthesize kaoliniteMe complexes. In our previous work with U [41], we obtained the same methanol-wet state (with the basal spacing of 1.12 nm) as prepared earlier in the literature using the kaolinite-DMSO and kaolinite-NMF pre-intercalates [10,12,15,19,29,30,[33][34][35][36].…”

“…Using elemental and thermal analysis results, Tunney and Detellier [7], Komori et al [15], and Matusik and Klapyta [36] calculated the values of x=0.87, x=0.36, and x=0.48, respectively, for the supposed chemical formula of In spite of the more eco-friendly behavior of U, there are only two studies reported in the literature [34,41], where the kaolinite-U pre-intercalate was used to synthesize kaoliniteMe complexes. In our previous work with U [41], we obtained the same methanol-wet state (with the basal spacing of 1.12 nm) as prepared earlier in the literature using the kaolinite-DMSO and kaolinite-NMF pre-intercalates [10,12,15,19,29,30,[33][34][35][36]. However, the drying of our methanol-wet complex leaded to a somewhat different methoxylated kaolinite structure with x=0.3, which was far below the theoretical upper limit ratio of methoxy functionalization (x=1) of the inner surfaces.…”

“…In our previous study [41], we presented a detailed experimental and molecular simulation characterization of the possible wet and dry kaolinite-Me complexes. As a continuation of this research, in this work we synthesized, through the wet kaolinite-Me intermediate complex, the kaolinite-CTAC intercalation complex, which was further used to get kaolinite nanoscrolls.…”