Abstract
The present work aims to study the affinity of a component of the thyme essential oil “thymol” to natural Moroccan clay “Rhassoul” using the adsorption technique. The physicochemical characterizations of the purified and modified clay were carried out by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), DTA/TGA, and SEM-EDX. Thymol adsorption tests on the purified Rhassoul (Rh-P) and the modified one by CTAB (Rh-CTAB) were followed by UV-visible spectroscopy. They show that the adsorption isotherms can be described by the Freundlich model and that the kinetics of adsorption is in accordance with the pseudo-second-order model for the two clays. Adsorption capacities obtained were of the order of 6 mg/g for the purified Rhassoul and 16 mg/g for the modified Rhassoul by cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB). These values show that the modified Rhassoul has a better adsorption capacity compared to the purified Rhassoul.
Highlights
Rhassoul is a natural clay soil of Moroccan origin, traditionally used for centuries in cosmetics by all the populations of North Africa and even in some regions of the Middle East. e Rhassoul deposits, unique in the world, are located on the edge of the southeast of the tertiary sector of Missour in the Moulouya valley 200 km from the Fes city
Rhassoul has been the subject of some recent studies which concerned the adsorption of fungicides [2], adsorption of textile dyes such as methylene blue [3, 4], basic yellow cationic dye [5], and methyl violet [6], and other applications in water treatment [7,8,9,10,11]
We are interested in testing the affinity of thymol to Rhassoul by studying its adsorption kinetics to determine the relative adsorption capacity of each clay and specify the kinetic model and the adsorption isotherm
Summary
Rhassoul is a natural clay soil of Moroccan origin, traditionally used for centuries in cosmetics (soap, shampoo, masks,...) by all the populations of North Africa and even in some regions of the Middle East. e Rhassoul deposits, unique in the world, are located on the edge of the southeast of the tertiary sector of Missour in the Moulouya valley 200 km from the Fes city. Similar studies were done; montmorillonite and Journal of Chemistry kaolinite have been tested as effective materials for the adsorption of terpenic compounds, and the use of loaded clays as new natural insecticides has been proposed [13, 15, 16]; especially, the adsorption of thymol onto the purified bentonite and its counterpart modifies part CTAB [14]. In this context, we are interested in testing the affinity of thymol to Rhassoul by studying its adsorption kinetics to determine the relative adsorption capacity of each clay and specify the kinetic model and the adsorption isotherm
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