Appraisal of the Usability of Sepiolite Material with Respect to Radiometric and Elementary Properties in Esk4ehir, Turkey

Abstract

Sepiolite is a naturally occurring clay mineral of sedimentary origin, and belongs to the phyllosilicate group and is a magnesium hydrosilicate (Si.030Mg8(OH)4(H20)4.8H20). This study aimed to determine the elemental distributions and the radiometric characterization of sepiolite samples collected from available sepiolite deposits in Turkey, particularly, Eskisehir-Beylikova (EB) and Eskisehir-Sirvihisar (ES). For radiometric analysis, each sepiolite sample collected from deposits was determined based on average gamma dose rate values using gas proportional counters (G-M). The average gamma dose rate from 9 samples in the 2 different regions were: 27.22 and 21.85 iiSv/h, respectively. These results are low and below the world average (2.50 mSv).