Coupled chemical processes at clay/electrolyte interface: a batch titration study of Na-montmorillonites

The present work addresses the protolytic charge of montmorillonite, which occurs on the broken-bond sites at the particle edges. The purpose is to overcome the general difficulty arising in potentiometric titration due to coupled side reactions, which severely impede the titrant budget (partial dissolution of the clay and of secondary phases, hydrolysis and readsorption of dissolved species, cation exchange). Batch potentiometric titrations were carried out on the montmorillonite fractions extracted from two bentonites (MX80 and SWy2) to quantify their protolytic charge. The effects of equilibration time (24 h and 7 days), pH from 4 to 10, and ionic strength (0.1 and 0.01 mol L(-1)) were extensively studied for the MX80 sample. Quantification of dissolution was achieved by analysis of the equilibrium solutions for dissolved species and by La(3+) exchange of the readsorbed species. The results clearly show that secondary phases such as iron- or silica-rich minerals contribute to the dissolved species, according to the nature of the raw bentonite. Furthermore, readsorption affects significant amounts of dissolved species. The overconsumption of proton/hydroxide due to dissolution, readsorption, and hydrolysis of dissolved species was evaluated using a self-consistent thermodynamic calculation. The ability of such calculation to correct the raw titration curves in order to extract the titrable surface charge of montmorillonite was evaluated by comparison with the continuous titration procedure. Especially in the alkaline domain, correcting the raw batch titration curves for the measured side reactions failed to reproduce the continuous titration curves. These observations demonstrate the limitations of the batch titration method and the superiority of fast, continuous methods for quantifying the dissociable surface charge of clays.