What is bentonite cat litter and what are its benefits?

What is the importance of bentonite cat litter? Do you know what bentonite is and what are its characteristics? What are the differences between this type of cat litter and other types of litter and how is it produced in the factory?

Cat litter products have only been on the market for about 63 years and have been around for pet cat owners. Traditionally, people used whatever material was readily available to them, including sand, garden soil, ashes, and shredded newspaper as litter for their cats.

Next, in 1947 in Britain, a young man named “Edward Lowe” gave his neighbor an absorbent material called Fuller’s Earth. Edward worked for his father’s company, Fuller’s Earth Union (FEU), which later became part of Laporte Industries, which sold industrial absorbents. Edward began marketing this clay as “cat litter” and its popularity quickly grew and it didn’t take long for it to spawn a whole new industry.

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Application of bentonite cat litter

Clay cat litter, made with sodium bentonite, entered the market about forty years later and was an instant hit. Today, approximately 69% of the cat litter market is bentonite cat litter.

Traditional cat litters are made of highly absorbent clay minerals that help collect unpleasant odors in the cat litter caused by cat urine; But on the other hand, sodium bentonite clay was also used for this type of bed. The advantage of sodium bentonite clay is that it sticks together when wet, allowing you to remove and replace only the soiled bedding.

The reason most people prefer bentonite cat litter is that traditional litters need to be changed more frequently, while lumpy cat litter allows solids and urine clumps to be removed more easily. be thrown away; And then each time, a small amount of new substrate is added. A cat litter box using clumping litter can last up to a month without needing a complete litter change.

Benefits of using bentonite cat litter

There is scientific evidence that using a cat litter box can reduce potential environmental hazards for kittens. Bentonite cat litter is completely safe for your cat’s health.

Some manufacturers of these types of beds generally use some aromatic substances; These scents include apple, lavender, lemon, rose, strawberry, and coffee, which will provide your kitty with a fresh scent. Also, by using these scents, your cat’s litter will always be fresh and smell good. So, one of the important points in buying cat litter with bentonite is to pay attention to its fragrance.

Is bentonite cat litter safe for domestic cats?

The concerns about clay and bentonite litters that are important to many pet cat owners are completely unfounded. Interestingly, some people think that these litters can cause stomach problems for cats!!

More than half of the substrates sold today include clay and bentonite; However, since the introduction of bentonite cat litter more than fifteen years ago, it has been safe for cats. In fact, the ease with which clay is collected has greatly contributed to the development of cats as pets. During 25 years, according to Dr. Elsey, who is a feline veterinarian, has never seen a case of bentonite litter build-up causing problems in cats.

Bentonite cat litter production technology

As we mentioned in the introduction, cat litter was invented by H. Edward Lowe, an American, in 1947, because the owners of domestic cats were looking for the best absorbent materials to remove excrement from cat litter. .

Although all of these litters contain absorbent materials, for example, silica gel, wood powder, rice husks, etc. can be used to make cat litter. But bentonite is more suitable for cat litter because of its cheap price and good water absorption, coagulability and deodorization, and excellent physical properties.

Bentonite is a kind of basic clay with smectite mineral; Each particle of bentonite consists of thousands of montmorillonite nanocrystals. Montmorillonite is a crystal consisting of two silicon-oxyoxygen (hydrogen-oxygen) octahedral layers.

Due to the fact that there is a silicon dot that needs to be replaced by aluminum in the tetrahedron of the montmorillonite crystal, there is an aluminum dot that needs to be replaced by magnesium in the octahedron, this creates a permanent negative electric charge between the crystalline layer and, as a result, Between the crystalline layer, it absorbs a large amount of exchangeable cations.

The distance between montmorillonite nanocrystals is greatly increased. So the montmorillonite building block – the space between the nanocrystals can only hold so much hydrogen and that’s why bentonite cat litter has good absorption.

Bentonite cat litter is mainly divided into two categories of cat litter, non-compressible (can be compacted) and compactable cat litter. Along with people’s attention to the quality of cat litter and continuous improvements to produce better types of cat litter, and of course the tendency of families to have a pet cat, this has become an essential need.

Condensing cat litter is currently one of the most common litters for domestic cats, and its moisture absorption rate is very strong. If you use this type of cat litter with bentonite, the moisture in the soil and cat excrement such as urine will be absorbed very quickly, and this condition will make the consumption of litter to renew the materials inside the box much less.

Pet cat owners can add new litter whenever needed; With clumping litter, there is no need to completely replace the cat’s litter.

The important thing is that small particles of cat litter can create a lot of dust, and this is a serious threat to the pet or even the health of the owners of these animals.

One of the effective ways to solve this problem is to produce litter with coarser particles, but changing the size of the cat’s litter particles makes urine and excrement not fully absorbed; Because the gap between the particles is easily enlarged and these excretory materials flow again. Therefore, the production of cat litter in a spherical shape, which has a faster absorption rate and a higher amount of water absorption, is an inevitable choice in dense litter development programs.

In addition to people’s needs for cat litter product quality, the standard of these litters focuses on three key features: accumulation property, water absorption, and dust generation capacity.

Reabsorption includes two indices of absorption speed and water absorption. The main factor that affects the dust generation capacity of litters is the granularity and activity intensity of cats. If the granulation is too fine, a heterogeneous environment is created and the cat litter produces more dust. In order to reduce dust, the cat litter should be evenly distributed.