Remoção de furfural e HMF, produzido na hidrólise ácida de biomassas lignocelulólicas, por adsorção.

Abstract

For economic, geopolitical and environmental reasons the world attention turned to alternative sources of energy. National initiatives include the development of new technologies based on lignocellulosic biomass, thus allowing for its use as feedstock in the process of production of bioethanol. Due to the difficulty encountered in the fermentation, because of the appearance of inhibitors during hydrolysis, this work aims at studying the use of clays occurring in the state of Paraiba, bentonite and vermiculite, to adsorb furfural and hydroxymethylfurfural, inhibitors present in the liquor hydrolyzed. Preliminary tests were conducted using natural and organophilic vermiculite clays and light green and justina bentonite clays. During this testing was measured the amount of adsorbate at the beginning and end of the tests using a spectrophotometer at 284 nm, so that these values could calculate the amount of each inhibitor adsorbed (q) and removed (%R) for each clay. It was observed that the clays and organophilic natural vermiculite adsorbed larger amounts of furfural that bentonite clays, 22.95 and 13.36 (mg / g), respectively. New experiments were performed with these clays using the tool as 2² factorial design with three replications at the central point, aiming to evaluate the influence of pH and adsorbent mass for the adsorption capacity q (mg/g) and removal (%R), where was observed a need to use a star planning, since was influence of the curvature. It was also noted that regardless of the clay used was obtained similar amounts of adsorbed inhibitor, showing that the use of natural vermiculite becomes more feasible, since the achievement of organophilic vermiculite requires more procedures. During the realization for experiments from the star planning , using natural vermiculite, was followed by the kinetic of the process for the analyzing the behavior of the concentration of inhibitors over time, where we found, in most experiments, a greater decrease in opening minutes followed by a region of stability, about 30 minutes, and an increase in concentrations in the final minutes. After the completion of planning there was the influence of the factors studied in the adsorption of furfural and HMF and it was concluded that under this analysis, the adsorbent mass has influence only on the amount adsorbed (q) inhibitors for the clay used And that the pH did not influence this process in any response. The amount of inhibitor removed by adsorbents studied is low when compared with other methods, but its combination with some of these methods can produce better results.