Abstract:
Development of montmorillonite clay as inexpensive natural absorbent to remove
organic anionic dyes from waste water was investigated as the main objective of this study. It was a
part of a major project concerning development of local minerals and related materials for low-cost
and efficient water purification. The work carried out on investigation of the effect of sintering
temperature of the montmorillonite clay on methylene blue adsorption is reported in this paper. It was
carried out by sintering the selected clay at different temperatures of 100 -900 0C, followed by an dye
adsorption study performed using methylene blue dye. The XRD phase analysis confirmed the
existence of appropriate montmorillonite phase in the selected clay. The pore size decreases with the
increase of sintering temperature as expected. The endothermic peak was observed at 400 0C due to
loss of hydroxyl groups resulting reduction of adsorption above 400 0C. That may result in reduction
of reactive sites in clay surface also by minimizing adsorption capacity. Hence this suggests 450 0C as
the optimum sintering temperature of this clay, with an adsorption capacity of 12.8 mgg-1
at room
temperature, to be used for water filtration application
