Re-examination of the kinetics of the thermal dehydroxylation of kaolinite

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Abstract
The results obtained from this study of kaolinite dehydroxylation explain why different investigators have ascribed both first-order kinetics and a diffusion mechanism to this reaction. The fact that activation energies reported by these workers agree well, in spite of the different kinetics assumed when performing the calculations, is also explained. From a comparison of the results obtained by isothermal and non-isothermal methods it is concluded that, for reacted fractions,α, <0·6, kaolinite dehydroxylation is controlled by a diffusion process. A reaction mechanism explaining this behaviour is proposed.