Experiment No. 2.

Sand control Test: Active and Total Clay Content

AIM: To Determine The Total and Active clay content in the given sand sample.

THEORY:

Clays are essentially aggregates of very minute crystalline, usually flake shaped particles
that can be classified on the basis of their structure and composition into a few groups which are
known as clay minerals. Some clays are composed of particles of single clay minerals while
other can be mixtures. Clays are baked or hardened when heated to high temperatures (during
molten metal pouring). Clays are added from time to time to retain bonding strength of moulding
sand. Clay particles range from 0.01 to 1 um affecting strength, permeability etc. Natural
moulding sands contain sand and clay in adequate proportions while in synthetic sand, clays are
added for desired strength.

For testing purposes, AFS clay can be defined as “particles which fall to settle one inch
per minute when suspended in water. These are usually less than 20 micron in diameter.” This,
then includes fine silica or silt as well as the clay material present and the total percentage of
these particles is called AFS clay content of the sand.

TOTAL CLAY = ACTIVE CLAY + DEAD CLAY

Where, dead clay is unwanted materials like burnt binder, burnt fines and other fine minerals.
Procedure to find Total Clay content-

1. Take 50gm dried sample. Add 475 ml distilled water and 25ml caustic soda solution.
2. Agitate for 5min with mechanical stirrer or shaker, dilute with water to a height of 6 inch
and let it settle for 10mins.
3. Siphon off 5inch of water, dilute again to 6inch and let it settle for 10 mins.
4. Repeat above step enough times so that after standing 5 mins, the water is clear.
5. Remove the remaining sand grains from bottle, dry and weigh. The loss in weight of the
original 50gm sample multiplied by 2 gives the AFS clay percentage in the sand.

Procedure to find Active Clay content-

The effective clay which will contribute to developing bonding properties (without considering
unwanted clay like silt) can be quickly measured by methylene blue dye absorption test. This dye
exploits base exchange capacity of active clay and inert nature of dead clay.

1. The fines, clusters, clay balls and heavy coatings are broken usually by ultrasonic
scrubbing for 15 min.
2. 5gm of dry sand mix is taken in 250 ml conical flask and 50 ml distilled water is added to
it. The slurry is shaken for 15 min.
3. 0.5 N solution of H2SO4 is then prepared and 2 ml of it is added to sand solution in the
flask and later shaken well.
4. Methylene blue solution (3.6 gm of powder in 1 liter of distilled water) is filled in burette.
Each time a drop from burette to flask is added, it is shaken and a drop from flask is
placed by means of a glass rod on a filter paper. Initially, a faint blue spot is observed
surrounded by clear water ring.
5. At a certain stage, the clear water ring will change to light blue, green ring radiating
outwards towards the periphery. This is the end point of the titration and the burette
reading is noted.
6. A calibration curve is plotted showing a linear relationship between clay content (active)
and volume of methylene blue by taking varying amount of clay in sand mix. From this
curve, unknown test mix clay content can easily obtained.