The Effect of Surfactant on Zeolite Preparation from Iraqi Kaolin

In this study, zeolite type A was successfully prepared from kaolin; as a source for silica and alumina. The effect of a cationic surfactant (hexadecyltrimethylammonium Bromide (CTABr) was studied during the preparation of zeolite type A from kaolin clay (structurally modified). The addition ratio was (0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8) CTABr. Also, CTABr was added with different amounts of (25, 75, 150 and 300) mg/l to commercial zeolite type A (surface modified). The prepared samples were characterized using FTIR, surface area and adsorption capacity. The results indicated that the adsorption capacity was decreased as the concentration of CTABr is increased. The minimum adsorption capacity was 8.4109 % gH2O / gzeolite using 300 mg/l of surfactant, while it was reached 6.907% gH2O / gzeolite by using 0.8% CTABr of kaolin within the preparation. Furthermore, the increased amounts of CTABr causes to increase the surface area of surface modified zeolite where it was increase from (19.938 to 23.8655, 24.377 and 25.2174 (m2/g achieving an increase of 22.6, 25.2 and 29.6% respectively, A large increase more than 100% in the surface area was obtained for the structurally modified samples by increasing the CTABr concentration from (13.0113 to 24.0935, 25.7594, 26.2719 and 27.12) m2/g.