Rhological properties of Clay-Polymer Composite Hydrogels Gila Vilchez, Cristina González-Morales, Eduardo Bonhome Espinosa, Ana Belén Díaz Arinero, Esther Leon-Cecilla, Alberto Ruiz Fresneda, Miguel Ángel Medina Castillo, Antonio Luis Merroun, Mohamed Larbi López López, Modesto Torcuato Polymers Clay Hydrogel This study is part of the project TED2021-131099B-I00, funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ and by “Unión Europea NextGenerationEU/PRTR” Contamination by heavy metals poses many threats, affecting food chain safety, food quality, and the agricultural production. However, highly contaminated environments are reservoirs of heavy metal tolerant microbes, such as Stenotrophomonas bentonitica that is found in natural bentonite. In this work, we describe the synthesis and rheological characterization of alginate-cellulose hydrogels at different polymeric proportions, with best results for 30/70 W/W alginate/cellulose proportion and final concentration of 1%wt. For this concentration, we added bentonite at 1%wt to encapsulate S. bentonitica cells. A hydrogel precursor was created by adding CaCO3 in combination with D-glucono-δ-lactone, which was additionally cross-linked with a CaCl2 solution. Alginate beads were used to assess their metal bioremediation potential. The rheological properties under shear of the hydrogels were analysed for the different conditions and the results were related with microstructural changes analysed by HRSEM. 2025-12-10T11:41:22Z 2025-12-10T11:41:22Z 2024-07-29 conference output Gila-Vilchez, C. et al. (2024). Rheological Properties of Clay-Polymer Composite Hydrogels. In: Raymundo, A., Alves, V.D., Sousa, I., Galindo-Rosales, F.J. (eds) Proceedings of the Iberian Meeting on Rheology. IBEREO 2024. Springer Proceedings in Materials, vol 56. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-67217-0_18 9783031672163 9783031672170 2662-3161 2662-317X https://hdl.handle.net/10481/108692 10.1007/978-3-031-67217-0_18 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ open access Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacional Springer Nature