Experimental Investigation and Modeling of Physico-Chemical and Structural Properties of Bentonite/Chitosan Composites

This work presents an investigation and modeling on the physicochemical properties of clay/polymer composites (in our case bentonite/chitosan), as a function of the concentration of chitosan added by intercalation. First, we developed a wet method for preparing composites and then a characterization in order to valorize the new materials for water treatment purposes. To this end, we carried out an analysis by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) accompanied by Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS) to study the morphology and chemical composition of the complex, and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometry (FTIR) analysis to identify clay and polymer compositions (chitosan). In addition, an analysis from X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) is achieved for the determination of the spacing between clay-sheets and the particles sizes of composites, for various values of the initial polymer concentration. Finally, we tried to model the different results dealt with the physico-chemical and structural properties of the considered composite.