[Effect of treatments of hydrogen peroxide and sodium dithionite-citrate-bicarbonate on clay minerals of red earth sediments].

ABSTRACT

As classical procedures for pretreatment of soil sediments, hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and sodium dithionite-citrate-bicarbonate (DCB) treatment methods are very important in removing the organic matter and iron oxides acting as cementing agents in the soils. However, both of these methods have less been focused on the effect on the clay minerals when separating. Here, we report the comparable methods between H2O2 and DCB to reveal their effect on clay minerals in red earth sediments using X-ray diffraction (XRD). The XRD results suggested that mineral particles can be totally decentralized by either H2O2 or DCB method in the soils and high purity clay minerals can be obtained by separating quartz and other impurities from clay minerals effectively. However, the XRD data were distorted by the DCB treatment owning to the cation exchange between Na+ and interlayer cation. On the contrary, the authentic data can be obtained by H2O2 treatment. Therefore, the H2O2 treatment seems to be a more appropriate method to obtain authentic information of clay mineralogy when separating of clay minerals from red earth sediments.