Preparation and characterization of montmorillonite intercalation compounds with quaternary ammonium surfactant: Adsorption effect of zearalenone

Abstract

Montmorillonite (Mt) was used as the original material to prepare intercalation compounds with quaternary ammonium surfactant (QAS). The adsorption of zearalenone (ZEA) onto Mt and organomodified Mt was investigated in vitro. Effects of QAS in binding ZEA were studied. By the method of intercalation with dioctadecylmethylbenzylammonium chloride (DOMBAC), the sample exhibited the highest adsorption rate of ZEA (93.2%) which was much higher than that of Mt (10.5%). Several methods were adopted to characterize samples, including XRD, TG/DSC, N2 adsorption/desorption, and FTIR. Adsorption isotherm parameters were obtained from Langmuir and Freundlich and the adsorption data fitted better to Langmuir. All results indicate that organomodified Mt has great potential to be a high-performance material to control ZEA contamination. © 2014 Yujin Li et al.