Estudo de argilas organofílicas destinadas à separação óleo/água.

Abstract

Oiled waters thrown into the environment is a huge problem faced by the petroleum industry. This kind of water turns into a problem of how to be purified, and how to improve its quality. The environmental legislations are extremely strict, and they request the industry to clean this kind of water that is wasted. The treatment with conventional processes when they are economically inaccessible, they are not efficient in the right separation. So, researches have been developed in order to find out processes that will be cheaper and more effective. One of the processes has been the use of organophilic clay utilized as a solver. This research paper is part of series of researches, which has the purpose to obtain and characterize the organophilic clay, seeking its use in the petroleum industry. To this happen, it was transformed into organophilic clay esmectite national and imported, coming from respectively the city Boa-Vista in the state of Paraíba, Brazil and from Wyoming a city in the United States. And also it was used two kinds of salts commercialized in Brazil: clorite of hexadecil trimetil ammonium (GENAMINCTAC50) e clorite de alquil dimetil benzil ammonium (DODIGEN-2808). Also, a study was done with the imported commercial organophilic clay seeking to develop a comparative analysis to show the different degrees of separation of the oil/water from these organophilic clay and those prepared at laboratory. The materials were characterized according to their physicochemical characteristics as well as their capacity to absorb oil. By using the result of X rays diffraction, it was made possible to verify that the quaternary salt it was effectively incorporated into the different levels of the clay. Also it was verified that the presence of the quaternary ammonium salt (chloride of trimetil hexadecil ammonium) in the spaces interlamelares was evidenced by analyzes thermal diferencial.O organofilização process did not cause significant modifications in the morphology of particles of the montmorilonita. Based in the results of the capacity of absorption of the organophilic clay in organic solvers, it was observed that the samples chocolate 80G (0,8 meq/g), fluid gel 100G (1,0 meq/g) e sigma 80G (0,8 meq/g), presented a greater efficiency of absorption in lubricant oil when compared to the others samples. When looked closer, the potential separation of oil/water presented by organophilic clay chocolate 80G (0,8 meq/g), fluid gel 100G (1,0 meq/g) e sigma 80G (0,8 meq/g), it could be found that those samples have a similar behavior of the active coal, because both showed a concentration of oil in the inferior permeable of 0,01 ppm. So it was possible to prove that the organophilic clay when treated with quaternary salt of ammonia GENAMIN CTAC-50 presented a satisfactory of oil/water that indicates a potential to obtain, in industrial processes of separation, of a concentration of oil in the inferior permeable requested by CONAMA to be discarded into the environment.