Many of therapeutic treatments in spas are concentrated on mud therapy. Clays are included in the formulation of thermal mud as vehicles of the mineral medicinal water. To be suitable for therapeutic use, some mineralogical, rheological and thermal properties should be respected in order to be topically applied. Our objective is to explore the suitability of three Tunisian commercial green clays traditionally used as facial and body masks by women in the region of Douiret (CD), Tozeur (CT) and Korbous (CK) in terms of their physicochemical structure chemical composition, heavy metals risk assessment, thermal properties, plasticity, rheology and their potential application as peloid with distilled and sodium chloride-rich sulfated thermal waters from hot spring in the region of hammam Lif and Korbous and sea waters. The mineralogy of samples (clay fraction and associated minerals) was determined by X-ray powder diffraction and FT-IR analysis, and the chemical composition was obtained by ICP. The main clay fraction of the samples was smectite and illite with significant amount of kaolinite. Regarding their mineralogical properties, the samples with a high amount of smectite fraction are more suitable for use in Tunisian spas and for the application as peloids. The thermal analyses of clay powders shows a specific heat value comparable to those use used in spas. Also the muds showed a low cooling rate which is necessary for therapeutic use. Rheological properties of peloids prove their thixotropic characteristics.
Keywords: Peloids; Rheology; Thermal properties; Thermal water; Tunisian clay.
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