Hybrid materials in the remediation of arsenic contaminated waters: a physico-chemical study

AbstractHybrid materials are obtained by the organic modification of sericite using the organic cations viz. tetramethylammonium chloride (TMA or T) and dimethyldioctadecylammonium chloride as (DDDMA or D) by a simple wet cation exchange process. Surface morphology of these solids is discussed with the Scanning Electron Microscopic images. Moreover, the materials are characterized by the X-ray diffraction and Fourier Transform-Infrared analytical techniques. Removal behavior of these organo-modified sericite samples is assessed for arsenite and arsenate from aqueous solutions under the batch and column reactor operations. The batch reactor experiments show that increasing the sorptive concentration (1–20 mg/L) and pH (2–10) is caused to decrease the percent uptake of arsenite and arsenate significantly. Increasing the background electrolyte concentrations from 0.0001 to 0.1 mol/L NaNO3 causes a significant decrease in percent removal of As(III) which infers that As(III) is sorbed onto the solid surface, p...