Chemistry, Physics and Technology of Surface

ISSN 2518-1238 (Online), ISSN 2079-1704 (Print)

Zeolite adsorbents and ion exchangers reducing the concentrations of contaminants in aqueous medium, containing bioactive metals and endowed with bactericidal properties are promising for application in environmental protection practice and medicine. Phillipsite has a high ion exchange capacity and can be used to produce such materials. Silver-, copper-, and zinc-containing micro-mesoporous zeolite materials have been prepared on the basis of natural phillipsite from the Shukhuti field, Western Georgia(Saqartvelo), using ion-exchange reactions between grinded and washed by dilute hydrogen chloride solution zeolite and a salt of a corresponding transition metal in the solid phase followed by washing with distilled water. Synthesized in such way adsorbent-ion-exchangers are characterized by chemical analysis and sorption data (nitrogen adsorption-desorption isotherms at 77 K and water vapour sorption at room temperature), powder X-ray diffraction patterns, Fourier transform infra-red spectra, and scanning electron microscope images. Obtained materials keep the crystal structure and general sorption and ion-exchange properties of phillipsite, they contain up to 230 mg/g of silver, 66 mg/g of copper, and 86 mg/g of zinc, which is several times higher than the content of bioactive metals in the cation-exchange forms of clinoptilolite and synthetic zeolites obtained by ion exchange in the liquid phase described in the literature. Prepared silver-, copper-, and zinc-containing phillipsites show bactericidal and bacteriostatic activity towards Escherichia coli regardless of whether the number of released ions of the bioactive metal reaches the minimum inhibitory concentration in solution. The procedure of dry ion-exchange synthesis leads to an increase in the dispersion of the material, but does not affect the developed mesoporous system of phillipsite and the total pore volume averaging 0.285 cm³/g. The compliance of proposed method for preparation of silver-, copper-, and zinc-containing forms of phillipsite with high environmental standards is confirmed by its low Sheldon’s factor E in comparison with the similar green chemistry metrics of conventional methods of the ion exchange in solutions.

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