Investigation for Remediation of Selenium Aqueous Environment with Using Organic Pillared Bentonite by Radiotracer Technique

In this study remediation of selenium ions from aqueous solutions was investigated using organic pillared bentonite as an adsorbent. Organic pillared bentonite was produced from Resadiye (Tokat, Turkey) bentonite using hexadecylpyridinium chloride and aluminum polyoxy-cations. All the experiments were carried out by tracing with selenium radioisotope. For the production of the radioactive selenium radioisotope, selenium dioxide was irradiated in the central thimble of ITU TRIGA Mark II Training and Research Reactor at Energy Institute of Istanbul Technical University. Radioactivity measurements carried out by the gamma-ray spectroscopy system were used to determine of selenium isotope. The relative importance of test parameters like concentration of adsorbate, pH of the solution and contact time on adsorption performance of organic pillared bentonite for selenium ion was studied. Evaluation of experiments for different parameters showed possibility of remediation of selenium from aqueous media by using organic pillared bentonite.