Modified clays for environmental remediation: Wastewater treatment

A comprehensive analysis of more than 7,000 topsoil and subsoil samples in Australia, matched with remote sensing and other data, confirms that clays are abundant, pervasive and regionally distributed across this significantly weathered continental landscape1. The predominant use of these clays within Australia is for building materials (e.g. paints, paper filler, bricks), ceramics and porcelain, horticulture and environmental remediation. Commercial use of clays in environmental remediation is as liners, geological barriers and containment walls in tailings dams, landfills, wetlands and water supply channels. Geosynthetic clay liners have widespread use in the construction/civil, mining and environmental sectors in Australia and involve forming bentonite within a flexible engineered fabric but the clay is essentially unmodified. This talk will focus on chemical modifications of clays resulting in either transformation of the source aluminosilicate or enhanced functionality due to adsorption of key compounds/elements.