Natural-zeolite purification by a sacrificial scavenger porous layer

The production of high purity zeolite plays a critical role as a starting material in biomedical and photocatalysis applications. In this work, we developed a new procedure for the purification of natural zeolite. This procedure is a thermochemical treatment that creates a sacrificial layer of porous zeolite followed by a rapid thermal treatment in an infrared furnace (RTP) at 350 degrees C under air for one hour etched with a diluted acid solution. This last step aims to remove the impurities diffused on the porous layer. To evaluate the efficiency of this new purification procedure, we used the following characterization techniques such as the X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), and atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS). The results show a total reduction of impurities after three purification cycles improving the purity from 89.23% to 99.76%.