Bentonite clay is sedimentary clay composed of weathered and aged volcanic ash. The largest and most active deposits come from Wyoming and Montana. (Mountain Rose Herbs stocks a Wyoming variety).
Bentonite is usually quarry mined from deposits that can range anywhere from 100 feet to several thousand feet. This depends on the health and vitality of the land it is processed from and how far a producer will go to find the right clay with the proper characteristics and consistency.
From here it is mined from the earth and brought out into the sun to remove excess water and moisture and, to make it easier to work with. After the initial drying begins the final transformation. It gets processed (ground) with huge hydraulic crushers and it then goes through the final process of micronization, or "fine granulating". This is usually done with the assistance of sophisticated and expensive granulators. Upon completion of this final process it gets inspected by a quality control team and is sent off for consumer use.
Bentonite clay forms from aged volcanic ash and includes minerals such as calcium and potassium. It has a strong, distinctive negative ionic charge, when hydrated, which works as a magnet for positively charged ions. In the human body, metals, bacteria and toxins are positively charged.
Bentonite is sold commercially in powders, liquid and capsule form as supplements. For topical applications it is also sold as a mask or a mud pack.
Bentonite is sold commercially in powders, liquid and capsule form as supplements. For topical applications it is also sold as a mask or a mud pack.
The principal clay mineral in bentonite is smectite. The term smectite is applied as a group name and montmorillonite is a mineral species name (Patternson, etal.., 1983). Montmorillonite, including both sodium and calcium varieties, is the most common member of the smectite group occurring in bentonite. The exchange capacity of most bentonite is within the range of 60 to 150 milli-equivalents per 100 g.
All bentonites contain mineral impurities, which vary considerably. A few are contaminated by clay minerals other than smectite, such as kaolinite and illite. The common non-clay minerals, and original rocks, in addition to a number of other minerals that are occasionally present.
Most high-swelling sodium bentonite deposits in United States occur in rocks of Cretaceous age, although deposits of Jurassic age are extensive in western United States and elsewhere in the world. The Southern or calcium bentonite occur mainly in formations of Cretaceous, Eocene and Miocene age. Other miscellaneous bentonite deposits, not the high-swelling type, in western United States are mainly of tertiary age.
Most bentonite, including both the sodium and calcium types, has a characteristics waxy or soapy texture. The surface colour tends to be light-yellowish green or gray when wet and lighter in colour when dry typically outcrops of high-swelling bentonites have a pop corn like or forth texture caused by alternative swelling and drying of the bentonite. Outcrops of the low-swelling types have a cracked appearance.
Location
Bentonite clay found mainly throughout the world. Most of the clay is found between the Big Horn Basin of Wyoming and the Black Hills of South Dakota. Over 70 percent of the sodium bentonite comes from Wyoming. Sodium bentonite clay is also found in Greece, China, Germany and Turkey. Sodium and calcium bentonite have been found in Russia, the Ukraine, Australia and India. In Pakistan Bentonite Clay is also present but not in useful form. It is present in impure form and want to treat to become pure. In Pakistan it is present at, Disstt Peshawar,Disstt Kohat,Disstt Mainwalli,Azad Kashmir,Disstt Attock,Thana Bola Khan(Sindh) and Makhran(Baluchistan) etc, but each deposits has its own qualities, its own %age of swelling, liquid limit, gelling,moisture content, chemical composition and P-H values etc.Which makes it high and low grades.Bentonite obtained from these locations have different qualities each quality or property is used for specific purpose. To get the specific quality bentonite from these locations is a commercial problem now a days in Civil Engineering construction.Bentonite obtained from a query does not match the required specifications of the project and to get bentonite from others countries, which make the use of bentonite uneconomical and hence increase the cost of the project.
Formation Of Bentonite Clay
Just as Mount St. Helens recently covered some western states with volcanic ash, a volcano covered Indiana with ash long ago. About 380 million years ago, violent volcanic eruptions in what is now central Virginia threw a great amount of ash into the air. This ash covered much of the present eastern United States. Near the vents, ash beds are about 200 feet thick. The beds decrease in thickness westward, and only a bed a few inches thick marks the event in Indiana. This ash bed, deposited in the Middle Devonian Period, is the Tioga Bentonite. The Tioga Bentonite can be distinguished from the surrounding rocks, and it can be traced on geophysical well logs throughout the eastern United States. Analysis shows the presence of the clay mineral potassium bentonite, along with angular quartz fragments and well-formed crystals of feldspar, mica, and zircon, which had begun to form deep in the earth before the ancient eruption. "
Bentonite, an aluminum silicate, is a clay mineral that is a part of the smectite class of clays ( smectite is one of the 7 classes of clays ). It is an evolved volcanic ash, which has gone through a literal developmental evolution lasting hundreds of thousands to millions of years. Hydrothermal variations and the presence of various minerals both have a role in the self-selective development of bentonite.
Slowly, the glass component of the ash was chemically altered in these low energy marine environments and consolidated into distinct layers of clay, often associated with Zeolite beds, marl, sandstone as well as shale and mudstone.
Deposits of bentonite/montmorillonite clay, which have been naturally protected from environmental dilution and contamination, are mined worldwide.
"Bentonite is a dark-grey to dark-green clay-rich rock composed of mostly montmorillonite, with minor concentrations of cristobalite, zeolite, and quartz, among others. Bentonite formation occurs when volcanic ash is altered by low-grade hydrothermal alteration. Alteration products of this type are distributed within Tertiary strata in Yamagata, Miyagi, Gunma, and Shimane Prefectures.
During the Laramide, volcanoes erupting to the west spewed ash that was carried by the wind to western North Dakota where it washed into wet areas - lakes and lagoons. With the passage of time the ash was transformed to bluish, bentonite clay layers that can be seen today in the badlands areas Bentonite is composed principally of the clay mineral montmorillonite, which if it contains sodium as an exchangeable ion, can swell conspicuously when wet; calcium bentonites are only slightly swelling or non-swelling. The Sentinel Butte bentonite is an iron- and sodium-rich montmorillonite, one of three major Paleocene-age bentonites in North Dakota shown to have been derived from volcanic ash.
