Special Clays and Their Applications

Dear Colleague,

Unlike common commercial clays, widely found in most countries and used in applications requiring low-value materials such as brick-making, pottery or engineering, special clays are much scarcer. Highly pure clay minerals are only found in a small number of countries in a few deposits that vary in size but are usually small, and the industrial use of these minerals gives them high commercial value. Examples of these minerals are natural products such as kaolin and other kaolin-bearing clays (ball clay, fire clay, flint or hard clay, and halloysite), bentonites, fibrous clays and Fuller’s earth, but other treated, modified or synthetic clays are also included. The specific properties of these special clays (inertness and stability in some cases, reactivity and catalytic activity in others) are directly related to their colloidal size and crystal structure, resulting in highly specific surface, optimum rheological properties and/or excellent sorptive capacity, which makes them very useful in a wide variety of industrial applications.

This Special Issue summarizes the most recent advances made in the application of special clays in fields as varied as the oil industry, water treatment, environmental remediation, green chemistry, colloids, bio- and nanocomposites, degradation and stabilization of polymers, health care etc.

Prof. Dr. Alberto Lopez Galindo
Guest Editor

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