Tratamento pirolítico de areia contaminada com petróleo.

Abstract

The intensification of oil exploration and development operations, in offshore and coastal fields, has substantially contributed to the likelihood of collateral events in the progression of the sector, such as oil spills. Circumstances of such magnitude, often treated as accidents or accidents, bring countless consequences to daily life, in addition to the possibility of not achieving a perpetuation of the affected ecosystems. Aiming to contribute to the transformation of harmful scenarios, to man and the environment, methods of mitigation of the generated impacts are developed, among them, the pyrolytic process. However, the application of pyrolysis technology to the removal of oil from beach sand samples, collected on the coast of Alagoas and contaminated due to the oil spill, which occurred in July 2019, off the Brazilian coast was investigated. For this, an Experimental Pyrolytic Unit was built, which enabled studies to remove the contaminant from the sand, according to the experimental planning. Thus, process parameters such as: temperature, pressure (vacuum) and heating rate were studied. The evaluation of the process was carried out through the statistical analysis of the oil removal results, complemented with the physical-chemical characterizations of the materials under study. Thus, through the relationship between the issue, the conception of ideas to apply pyrolysis, to idealize a Unit and to use mathematical tools to validate the technology, it was possible to achieve 99.92% of oil removal. It was also verified that the prevailing factor in the sand decontamination process was the vacuum. However, the need for high levels of this parameter was not verified. And, in the toxicity test, using Artemia sp., the ability to re-insert the treated material to the coastal region was evidenced. Thus, the use of the Experimental Pyrolytic Unit was able to promote the mitigation of environmental impacts, resulting from contamination, by oil spills, on the beach sands.