Synthesis and characterization of magnetic palygorskite nanoparticles and their application on methylene blue remotion from water

Recently there has been considerable interest in magnetic sorbents materials, which is added excellent capabilities such as sorption and magnetic response to an applied field. Accordingly, palygorskite nanoparticles were covered by magnetite using a co-precipitation technique and characterized by: X-ray fluorescence (XRF), X-ray diffraction (XRD), surface analysing and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) with element analysis and mapping, particle size, pore surface area (BET), density, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and zeta potential. Additionally, magnetic properties were studied by SQUID magnetometer, magnetic force microscopy (MFM) and also using a simple experimental setup. Magnetic nanoparticles produced had average diameters in a nanometric range. The amount of iron present in the nanoparticles increased by six times after the magnetization and a superparamagnetic behavior was exhibited with high saturation magnetization, from 4.0 × 10−4 Am2/kg to about 20 Am2/kg. A weight loss was also observed around 277 °C-339 °C by TGA, indicating a structural change from magnetite to maghemite, which confirms the magnetization of palygorskite. Batch adsorption experiments were carried out for the removal of methylene blue cationic dye from aqueous solution using pure and covered by magnetite palygorskite nanoparticles as adsorbents. Furthermore, about 90% of methylene blue was removed within 3 min using magnetized palygorskite.