Obtaining and Organophilisation of Smectite Clays with Reduced Iron Oxide Content

Abstract Raw clays from the Baltic region are characterized as smectite containing clays with significant amount of naturally occurring impurities that limiting the potential applications of crude Baltic clay resources. Purification of clay samples from Šaltiškių deposit (Venta basin) was carried out by varied concentration hydrochloric acid solutions and resulted in fine removal of carbonates and iron oxide. The main idea of this work is to widen the possible applications of local clay resources providing a new type of raw material for further organoclay production.