User:Lymperopoulos Loukas/Notebook/Experimental Chemistry/2016/09/28

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Objectives The objective for today includes the following: Test the 20% Bentonite beads and 30% dry Bentonite beads Collect and analyze UV Vis data for the 10% bentonite and 10% AC beads Protocol Testing the new bentonite beads The 20% Bentonite beads and the 30% powder Bentonite beads were tested using the same procedure that was used on the 10% Bentonite beads. UV Vis of the 10% Bentonite and 10% Activated Carbon beads 3 mL samples of the MG load and water rinse fractions from the 10% Bentonite and 10% Activated Carbon columns were analyzed using UV VIS. Using the calibration curves made from MG standards, we were able to calculate how much MG was both absorbed and desorbed from the beads. These results are shown below. Observations 20% Bentonite beads: 17 MG rinses, 3 DI water rinses 13 drops per minute The test results for the 20% Bentonite beads make sense, as this column should exhibit higher absorption (and thus more MG rinses) than the 10% Bentonite beads column. 30% powder Bentonite beads: 7 MG rinses, 4 DI water rinses 39 drops per minute The test results for the 30% Bentonite powder beads do not make sense. This column exhibited the lowest adsorption out of all the Bentonite columns, when it should have exhibited the highest. It also had the fastest flow rate. We hypothesized that these test results may be the result of our use of dry Bentonite in the synthesis of the 30% Bentonite beads, as opposed to Bentonite in solution. In order to test our hypothesis, we planned to synthesize and test 30% Bentonite beads made from a Bentonite solution. Data Table 1: Adsorption/desorption results of the 10% AC beads Table 2: Adsorption/desorption results of the 10% Bentonite beads As shown by the results above, the 10% AC beads were much less effective not only in adsorption, but about 30% of what was absorbed by the AC beads were desorped when pure water was eluted through.