Structural change and mineralogical transformation mechanism of aluminum hydroxide gels from forced hydrolysis Al(III) solutions containing AlO4Al12(OH)24(H2O)12 7+ polyoxycation during aging

Abstract

The structural change and mineralogy of Al gel during aging time were investigated by using spectroscopy techniques. The results indicated that: 1) the aggregation extent of solution-gel system increases with aging time, and the structure of amorphous gel becomes more short-ordered; 2) after six months, the gel formats nordstrandite and little gibbsite; 3) a marked decrease in the number of (Al-OH)oh bands occurring at 610 cm−1 and increase in the number of (Al-OH2)oh bands occurring at 555 cm−1 indicate that the gel undergoes rearrangement-like process during aging; 4) the gel constantly contains Al-O tetrahedron of Keggin structure, but the signal peak occurring at ≈61×10−6 of 27Al MAS NMR have a slight shift to downfield with aging time. A mineralogical transformation mechanism for hydrolysis Al(III) solution was proposed.