Research on adsorption mechanism and regeneration of organic modified montmorillonite

The adsorption of thiophene from thiophene-octane mixture has been investigated using organic-montmorillonite under proper conditions. The adsorbents were prepared by a xerogel process, followed by thermo - treatment. The adsorptive experiments show that C-P-MMT adsorbent has the higher capacity, 3.8mg/g (mg of sulfur per g of adsorbent). BET, XRD, NMR were used to characterize the adsorbents. It was found that a new spinel-phase was formed during thermal treatment, and the layer spacing of C-P-MMT absorbent was larger than that of Na-MMT. The organic montmorillonite prepared by PTMAB and CTMAB has lower crystallinity and surface area but larger pore diameter than it was prepared only by PTMAB. The XRD and NMR results also showed that the structure of the adsorbents has not changed after adsorption, suggesting that the prepared adsorbents could be easily regenerated.