Possible Mechanism and Modeling of Potassium Acetate Intercalating into Kaolinite

The kaolinite intercalated with potassium acetate with about 90% intercalation ratio was prepared by moisture-absorbing method at room temperature. The structure of kaolinite before and after being intercalated was characterized by XRD and IR. According to the experiment and previous research results, many possibilities were studied. It was proved that acetate ions were coordinated to water molecules firstly, and then the water molecules in the hydrated group were bonded to the inner surface hydroxyls by hydrogen bonding. It was suggested that the hydrated K~+ cation stayed between the methyl of acetate ion and the ditrigonal space of siloxane layer, and the hydrated K~+ cation partly keys into the ditrigonal space by structural computation in theory. A novel model was provided to analyze the possible mechanism of potassium acetate intercalating into kaolinite. The results show that computation data is in good agreement with experimental data.