I’m a field hand actually, yet sometime it’s interesting to know how thing works in microscopic scale. So fun! I’ll explain 3 common clay minerals that mostly found in my workplace right now: Montmorillonite (Smectite), Illite and Kaolinite. In recent years, Smectite is more widely recognized, while montmorillonite is typically associated with aluminius base exchange.
Montmorillonite/Smectite
It has been known as highly swelling clay. This clay mineral has three layered plate-like clay with each unit layer is roughly 10 Angstroms thick. That means, there is 1 million layer clay every 1 mm of thickness 😯 . It also very thin, highly flexible and has a huge surface area.
or, in detail structure, it shows as below:
How could the clay be negatively charged in the surface and positively charge in the edge? Here is the mechanism :
- Mg2+ substitutes Al+++. This Mg++ could be coming from water that is rich in Mg++
- Now, the surface become surplus of electron (negative ions) since Al has 3, while Mg has only 2.
- Because the surface now is negatively charged, it is enable to absorb cations such as Na+, K++, Ca++, Mg++. Those cations is exchangable. The CEC measure the amount of cations (in meq) per gram minerals.
- if significant amount of these ion is Sodium (Na+), then it’s called Sodium montmorillonite, if Calcium (Ca++), it’s called Calcium montmorillonite.
or in a nutshell, it might explained below:
A typical property of montmorillonite is that interlayer swelling (hydrating) with water. The layer absorb water and swell to the point where the forces that holding them together become weakened and the layer and the individual layer can be separated from the packs.
This is the comparison among clay minerals :
….to be continued….
Reference: MI Mud Manuals
Adventures! 
Selamat pagi bg, sya yogie yogendra hans lulusan teknik kimia universitas jambi, sya telah membaca beberapa bagian dari blog dan sudah menonton konten yutube bg ikhwan yg mengundang bg agus sebagai pembicara, sya sangat tertarik dengan dunia mud engineer bg dan sya memang sedang mencari info2 terkait pekerjaan dan ilmu dalam bidang tersebut, jika berkenan boleh sya bertanya terkait bidang tersebut bg? sebelumnya sya sudah menghubungi via linkedin namun sya tidk bisa mengirim pesan karna tidak berlangganan premium, maka dari itu sya mohon bimbingan dan waktunya bg. Terimakasih sebesar2nya