Layered or fibrous clay minerals are used as adsorbents because they have good performance to remove inorganic and organic species. In this work, a Brazilian fibrous clay mineral was applied to remove Remazol Yellow GR industrial dye from simple and binary systems; this was performed in the presence of lead in the latter case. The adsorption efficiency was investigated under various conditions of pH, time, temperature and dye concentration. The experimental data were fitted to the kinetic pseudo-first- and pseudo-second-order models, and the isotherms were fitted to the Langmuir and Freundlich models. The maximum adsorption capacity was 20.08 mg g-1 at pH 2, 240 minutes and 298 K, and these data were better fit by the kinetic pseudo-second-order model. The equilibrium study was fitted to the Langmuir model at 298 K and Freundlich for other temperatures and binary systems. The dye sorption in the presence of lead was decreased to 15 mg g-1. Therefore, palygorskite behaved as a promising solid for treating effluents.

Cellulose was first modified with thionyl chloride, followed by reaction with 2-aminomethylpyridine to yield 6-(2'-aminomethylpyridine)-6-deoxycellulose. The resulting chemically-immobilized surface was characterized by elemental analysis, FTIR, 13C NMR and thermogravimetry. From 0.28% of nitrogen incorporated in the polysaccharide backbone, the amount of 0.10 ± 0.01 mmol of the proposed molecule was anchored per gram of the chemically modified cellulose. The available basic nitrogen centers attached to the covalent pendant chain bonded to the biopolymer skeleton were investigated for copper, cobalt, nickel and zinc adsorption from aqueous solution at room temperature. The newly synthesized biopolymer gave maximum sorption capacities of 0.100 ± 0.012, 0.093 ± 0.021, 0.074 ± 0.011 and 0.071 ± 0.019 mmol.g-1 for copper, cobalt, nickel and zinc cations, respectively, using the batchwise method, whose data was fitted to different sorption models, the best fit being obtained with the Langmuir model. The results suggested the use of this anchored biopolymer for cation removal from the environment.

Silylation reactions involving hydroxylated surfaces are an important route for synthesis of new materials that could present selected properties, for application in different areas such as catalysis, chromatography, adsorption and electrochemistry. An overview of many synthetic routes, comprising organosilanes to yield phyllosilicates is now presented.