BENTONITE
Bentonite is absorbent aluminium. It is essentially impure clay consisting mostly of
montmorillonite. There are different types of Bentonite, each named after the respective dominant element, such as potassium (K), sodium (Na), calcium (Ca), and aluminium (Al). Bentonite usually forms from weathering of volcanic ash, most often in the presence of water. For industrial purposes, two main classes of Bentonite exist: sodium and calcium Bentonite.
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The different types of Bentonite:
i. Sodium Bentonite
Sodium Bentonite expands when wet, absorbing as much as several times its dry mass in water. Because of its excellent colloidal properties, it is often used in drilling mud for oil and gas wells. The property of swelling also makes sodium Bentonite useful as a sealant, especially for the sealing of subsurface disposal systems.
ii. Calcium Bentonite
Calcium Bentonite is a useful adsorbent of ions in solution, as well as fats and oils, being a main active ingredient of fuller's earth, probably one of the earliest industrial cleaning agents.
iii. Potassium Bentonite
Also known as potash Bentonite or K-Bentonite, potassium Bentonite is potassium-rich illitic clay formed from alteration of volcanic ash.
Following are the varied applications of Bentonite:
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Drilling
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It can be used in cement, adhesives and ceramic bodies.
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It can also be used as cat litter
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Bentonite is also used as a binding agent in the manufacture of taconite pellets as used in
the steel-making industry -
Fuller's earth, an ancient dry-cleaning substance, is finely ground Bentonite, typically used for purifying transformer oil
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Bentonite, in small percentages, is used as an ingredient in commercially designed clay bodies and ceramic glazes
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Bentonite also has the interesting property of adsorbing relatively large amounts of
protein molecules from aqueous solutions. Therefore, it is uniquely useful in the process
of wine-making, where it is used to remove excessive amounts of protein from white
wines -
Bentonite has been prescribed as a bulk laxative, and it is also used as a base for many
dermatological formulas -
Bentonite slurry walls are used in construction, where the slurry wall is a trench filled with a thick colloidal mixture of Bentonite and water.
These are the different grades of Bentonite that we provide:
