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Rodr_?guezReinoso F. Adsorptiondesorption of water vapor by natural and heattreated sepiolite in ambient air. Appl Clay Sci 1999。 B. Mixing。 D. PorosityThe removal of gaseous pounds from air is a need in many industrial applications. For this application, it is rather mon to use activated carbon pellets produced by extrusion of the arbonised precursor with a suitable binder before activation. However, the use of a mixed activated carbon–clay pellet could be convenient for processes involving the adsorption of polar molecules such as ammonia and hydrogen sulphide. In the case of sepiolite the clay could, additionally, act as a binder.Sepiolite is a fibrous silicate, Si12Mg8O30(OH)4 (H2O)4,constituted by microporous channels ( heat treatment of the mixture at 850 _C was followed by extensive washing with acidic water. The sepiolite is from Yunclillos, Spain and it was dried at 100 _C overnight.For the preparation of the pellets [4], the activated carbon was crushed to a particle size lower than 100 lm,mixed with an aqueous suspension of sepiolite, kneaded and conformed before drying at 110 _C. The proportion used for pellets ranges from 30% sepiolite, 70% carbon to 70–30%.Adsorption of ammonia and hydrogen sulphide (both with a purity higher than 99%) was carried out at 20 _C in a conventional gravimetric adsorption system up to a pressure of kPa. This pressure is much lower than saturation pressure (P0) for NH3, MPa and H2S, MPa.The porosity of the adsorbents has been already described [3,4]. All activated carbons are microporous but with different volume and micropore size volume of micropores determined by adsorption of nitrogen at 77 K increases in the order C53, the volume for carbon P being similar to carbon . On the other hand, the micropore size distribution was determined by immersion calorimetry in liquids with different molecular dimensions. The microporosity of carbon is accessible to dichloro methane ( nm) but not to benzene ( nm) or 2,2dimethylbutane ( nm), all microporosity in carbon is accessible to benzene but not to 2,2dimethylbutane and the microporosity of C53 is accessible to the three molecules.Sepiolite is an adsorbent differing from activated carbon in: (i) there is a large proportion of oxygen in the