It is well known that grinding of crystalline material cause a structural degradation and finally produce an amorphous phase. The amorphous phase thus prepared is expected to have a high reactivity under hydrothermal conditions. In the previous study, one of the authors reported that grinding treatment significantly increase the hydrothermal reactivity of talc, and aluminum bearing layer silicates was easily formed from ground talc by the hydrothermal treatment with AlCl
3 solution.
In the present study, original and well ground sepiolite from Kuzu, which is non-crystalline on an XRD pattern, was treated hydrothermally with Al (NO3) 3, NaAlO
2, and NaOH solutions. As a result, in Al (NO
3)
3 solution, tri-octahedral smectite, di-octahedral smectite, and kaoline mineral are formed successively from both ground and original sepiolite with increasing Al (in solution)/Si (in sepiolite) ratio. In NaAlO
2 and NaOH solution, both sample transformed into trioctahedral smectite and serpentine minerals with increasing the concentration of the solution. The kaolin mineral and the serpentine mineral formed from ground sepiolite are different from those from original sepiolite in the polytype and morphology.
These results reveal that the crystallinity of sepiolite is not effective in the reactivity in hydrothermal condition, because the nano-scale nature of sepiolite may dominate the hydrothermal behavior. It is also concluded, however, that the crystallinity of sepiolite has influence on the selection of reaction process in the hydrothermal transformations.
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