[Occurrence relationship between iron minerals and clay minerals in net-like red soils: evidence from X-ray diffraction].

The high purity of clay minerals is a key factor to reconstruct the palaeoclimate in clay mineralogy, however, the existence of iron minerals (such as goethite and hematite) and organics lead to the intergrowth of clay minerals and other minerals, producing other mineral impurities in enriched clay minerals. Although the removal of organics in soil sediments has been fully investigated, the occurrence state of iron minerals remains controversial, hindering the preparation of high-purity clay minerals. Therefore, the occurrence relationship of iron minerals and clay minerals in Jiujiang net-like red soils of the middle to lower reaches of the Yangtze River was investigated using the sequential separation method, which provided some implications for the removal of iron minerals in soil sediments. The results indicated that goethite and hematite were mostly absorbed on the surface of hydroxy-interlayered smectite and illite in the form of films, and the rest were absorbed by kaolinite.

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

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.

[Mineralogy and genesis of mixed-layer clay minerals in the Jiujiang net-like red soil].

Mineralogy and genesis were investigated using X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier infrared absorption spectroscopy (FTIR) and high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) to understand the mineralogy and its genesis significance of mixed-layer clay minerals in Jiujiang red soil section. XRD and FTIR results show that the net-like red soil sediments are composed of illite, kaolinite, minor smectite and mixed-layer illite-smectite and minor mixed-layer kaolinite-smectite. HRTEM observation indicates that some smectite layers have transformed into kaolinite layers in net-like red soil. Mixed-layer illite-smectite is a transition phase of illite transforming into smectite, and mixed-layer kaolinite-smectite is a transitional product relative to kaolinite and smectite. The occurrence of two mixed-layer clay species suggests that the weathering sequence of clay minerals in net-like red soil traversed from illite to mixed-layer illite-smectite to smectite to mixed-layer kaolinite-smectite to kaolinite, which indicates that net-like red soil formed under a warm and humid climate with strengthening of weathering.