Characterization of some selected Ghanaian clay minerals for potential industrial applications

The aim of this work was to study five (5) selected local raw clay materials from Ghana using different characterization techniques such as Thermogravimetric/Differential Thermal Analysis (TG/DTA), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier Transform Infra-red Spectroscopy (FTIR), Scanning Electron Microscopy equipped with Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (SEM-EDX) and Nitrogen Desorption (Brunauer-Emmett-Teller, BET) specific surface area analysis. The clay samples studied are; Nkroful kaolin (NK), Amanfrom kaolin (AK), Ball clay (BC), Akyem Feldspar (AF) and Akwatia silica (AS). SEM and EDX show the morphological features of the five clay samples and also confirm the presence of some dominant elemental compositions such as aluminium and silicon in all the samples. FTIR show that the vibrations spectra in the region around 3,600-3,700 cm − 1 and 700-800 cm − 1 are due to M-OH groups and that at 900-1000 cm − 1 corresponds to Si-O-Si modes. BET analysis gives specific surface area of the clay samples as NK (4.6 m 2 /g), AK (21.9 m 2 /g), BC (25.50 m 2 /g), AS (0.79 m 2 /g) and AF (0.49 m 2 /g). X-ray diffraction pattern confirm the presence of quartz as the major reflection in all the samples analysed and only kaolinite reflections appeared in three of the samples (NK, AK and BC). All the kaolinite clays (NK, AK and BC) are suitable starting materials for the fabrication of electroporcelain insulators, catalytic converters and diesel particulate filters.