Estudo da remoção de tiofeno por adsorção utilizando argila do Curimataú paraibano.

Abstract

The environmental pollution increased the need for tighter controls on emissions of pollutants from cars, trucks, bus and motorcicles, especially by reducing the emission of sulfur. This situation has highlighted the need for further research on removal of sulfur in fuels. Thus, it has been developed methods to prepare and characterize new adsorbents with high capacity for sulfur removal. The international regulations have established an increasing reduction of sulfur in fuels, reaching levels of 10 ppm. The use of clay for adsorption of contaminants in aquatic and gaseous effluents, has promoved great interest of researchers, since these materials are inexpensive and offer many possibilities in their compositions of adsorptive sites. The contaminants of sulfur present in petroleum and its derivatives are the aliphatic sulfides, disulfides, thiophene and its alkylated derivatives, and benzotiofeno dibenzotiofenos. Most of these compounds can be removed by the process of hydrodesulfurization (HDS), but sulfur-containing heterocyclic compounds are refractory to hydrodesulfurization. The adsorption process has shown high efficiency and low cost to remove these types of compounds. This study aimed to evaluate the adsorptive capacity of a clay mineral in the region of Paraiba Curimataú. This material was collected in the region near the city of Jacana / an RN in their natural form. The characterization of the material was performed by X-ray fluorescence with energy dispersive (EDX), X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermal analysis (TG/DTG) and infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). Then the material was tested as an adsorbent for the removal of thiophene in the gas stream. The identification and quantification of sulfur compounds were performed by gas chromatography with detection PFPD. The results showed high efficiency for the process, the clay mineral being able to remove 100% of this compound for 21 hours.