Nanocomposites of clay minerals and surfactants are of practical importance in many fields. Beside the use of these systems for pollution removal from waste water, they can also be used as catalysts, to stabilize clay formations while drilling for hydrocarbons, or for improving the strength of polymers. The nanocomposites are obtained through exchange of natural counter ions by ionic surfactant...

Management of soils to reduce the amount of PM10 emitted during agricultural tillage operations is important for attainment of air quality standards in California's San Joaquin Valley (SJV). The purpose of this study was to improve and expand upon earlier work of predicting tillage-generated dust emissions based on soil properties. We focus on gravimetric soil water content (GWC) and soil textu...

Safe disposal of nuclear waste is an important environmental challenge. Several countries are investigating deep geological disposal as a long-term solution for their high-level waste. In Belgium, the Oligocene Boom Clay is the reference host formation for research purposes and for the safety and feasibility assessment of the deep disposal of high-level and/or long-lived radioactive waste. The ...

ÐSorption and transformation of 1-naphthol by a K-smectite (K-SWy-2) were studied using batch sorption isotherms, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The sorbents included three preparations of the reference smectite clay (SWy-2): (1) whole clay containing naturally occurring carbonate impurities, (2) SWy-2 with the removal of carbonate impurities, and (...

In an effort to discover potent, orally bioavailable compounds for the treatment of atrial fibrillation (AF) and ventricular tachycardia (VT), we developed a class of gap-junction modifiers typified by GAP-134 (1, R(1)=OH, R(2)=NH(2)), a compound currently under clinical evaluation. Selected compounds with the desired in-vitro profile demonstrated positive in vivo results in the mouse CaCl(2) a...

This paper presents 53 well-documented cases of the short-term set-up of open-ended steel pipe piles driven at two fields in the North Sea. Increases in soil resistance during driving (set-up) were observed when pile driving was re-started after delays typically ranging between 24 h and 100 h. The soil encountered at the sites consisted of overconsolidated sands and clays, where the clays varie...

Reactions of organic molecules on Montmorillonite clay mineral have been investigated from various aspects. These include catalytic reactions for organic synthesis, chemical evolution, the mechanism of humus-formation, and environmental problems. Catalysis by clay minerals has attracted much interest recently, and many reports including the catalysis by synthetic or modified clays have been pub...

0263-2241/$ see front matter 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.measurement.2013.08.007 q This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works License, which permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author a...

Iron-bearing phyllosilicate minerals help establish the hydrogeological and geochemical conditions of redox transition zones because of their small size, limited hydraulic conductivity, and redox buffering capacity. The bioreduction of soluble U(VI) to sparingly soluble U(IV) can promote the reduction of clay-Fe(III) through valence cycling. The reductive precipitation of U(VI) to uraninite was...