Used mainly for identification of clay minerals from Quarternary – age deposits, shales, and soils.

Recommendation

• 15 g of a dry homogenized powdered sample of < 250 μm size fraction is preferred. If samples are delivered wet and bulky, additional preparation steps (drying, grinding, or sieving) prolong the analysis.
• Approximate turnaround time for 2CLAY analysis is two weeks per 10 samples.

Methodology

10 – 15 g of the sample (< 250 μm) is immersed in deionized water and disaggregated. The sample is stirred in an electronic mixer to isolate clays in suspension. The particles settle, and the salts that remain in solution are poured off. The sample is stirred again and allowed to settle until only the < 2 μm particles are in suspension. Using an eye dropper, the < 2 μm clays are placed onto a glass slide, which is then air-dried, glycolated, and scanned by XRD. Step-scanned data is collected from 2° to 34° 2θ with a fixed rate of 1° per min with a step size of 0.02°2θ.

Results

Semi-quantitative clay mineral analysis; comparing only the amount of clay minerals in the sample relative to each other.