Estudo da capacidade adsortiva da biomassa de palma forrageira (Opuntia tuna Mill) como adsorvente para remoção de contaminantes orgânicos em corpos d’água.

Abstract

The oil industry daily deals with problems due to leaks, spills and accidents during refining, transportation and oil storage operations and its derivatives. In the event of fuel spill major contaminants that have capacity to impact the environment are compounds of group BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes), being considered highly toxic to man. The search for new technologies for treating wastewater contaminated with petroleum compounds has grown considerably. Among processes used for decontamination of these effluents is adsorption process, which uses biomasses as adsorbents e has proven quite efficient. This study aims to assess the ability of cactus pear (Opuntia tuna Mill), dry natural as sorbent of organic compounds in water bodies through adsorption kinetic experiments and obtaining equilibrium isotherms, applying to obtained data obtained mathematical model of Langmuir. Contaminated effluent used in this work was simulated in the laboratory, obtaining a mixture of gasoline/water/biomass, through experiments using a table shaker stirring 130 rpm. Times were used with variation range of 5 to 60 minutes and concentrations ranging from 5 to 60% of contaminant. Results obtained were satisfactory, showing that on kinetics, adsorption rate was rapid, and the best results to gasoline adsorption were obtained in time of 10 minutes. With respect to adsorption equilibrium, Langmuir model fit well the experimental data obtained for biomass used, being the maximum adsorption capacity of gasoline of approximately 5.5 g per gram of cactus pear biomass. Results confirmed that, for gasoline adsorption studies using cactus pear "in natura", dried natural, this biomass appears as a promising adsorbent for this kind of effluent.