The European industrial sector is currently evolving towards industry 4.0 and an integrated resources and materials management system. In this frame, raw materials must fulfil an increasing number of technical specifications and regulations, depending on the end-user sector, giving rise to new, only partly solved, analytical challenges.
Clayey raw materials present a wide variety of uses depending on their specific composition. Bentonite-like clays are considered suitable candidates to be used in some industrial application as pharmaceutics, catalysis, antibacterial or food additive because of their highly desired adsorption properties.
Nevertheless, although the properties which montmorillonites can provide to industrial products are quite demanded, natural bentonite particles are practically indistinguishable from kaolin clay minerals when observing their physical microstructure by means of a scanning electron microscope. The combination of high-resolution spectrophotometric techniques is needed to completely characterize the raw materials extracted in the quarry to determine their final properties depending on the functional uses there are going to be allocated. 
On the other hand, some macroscopic properties of ceramic raw materials are closely connected to their porous microstructure. Many techniques can be used to characterize swollen materials, but gas adsorption was the one selected in the present study to fully correlate with montmorillonite content results, by means of adsorption-desorption isotherms and specific surface area data.
No specific, well-defined protocols are at present available on an industrial level for speciating and fully quantifying a ceramic product and, given how costly and poorly standardised such tests are, companies only perform general estimations by product type. Achieving a better understanding of each product type would enable the properties of the finished product to be much more effectively established and would allow clay characteristics to be determined at hitherto unknown levels.
In the present study, a specific methodology for the characterization of some clayey raw materials used in ceramic industry and its correlation with water vapour adsorption properties is presented. Six different clayey raw materials have been wholly characterized till obtaining their specific chemical formula and their water vapour adsorption behaviour was correlated with their specific composition.
The methodology proposed has used a combination of spectrophotometric techniques as waveline dispersive X-ray fluorescence (WD-XRF), random crystallite and oriented aggregate X-ray diffraction methods (XRD), simultaneous thermal analysis (TG-DTG) and water vapor adsorption equipment (WVA).
Obtained results show interesting relationship between montmorillonite content in clay with water vapour adsorption behaviour and specific surface area of material particles, which can help companies to understand product behaviour during ceramic manufacturing process.
At the light of the results it can be observed that there is a practically linear correlation between montmorillonite content and adsorption behaviour of the characterized materials, despite the presence of other minerals into the composition. The combination of spectrophotometric techniques with water vapour adsorption methodologies can help industry to determine raw material behaviour to broaden their consumption market.
This study was co-funded by the Generalitat Valenciana, through the Valencian Institute of Business Competitiveness (IVACE) and by FEDER Funds, within the framework of the FEDER operative program 2014-2020 (IMDEEA/2023/XX_REACTMAC).