Estudo da adsorção de contaminantes orgânicos provenientes da água de produção do petróleo, em coluna de leito fixo, utilizando biomassas como adsorvente.

Abstract

In the petroleum exploration and processes, a great amount of water is produced together with the oil and natural gas. This wastewater needs an appropriate treatment before discarded or reused, due to the great amount of organic pollutant content. In the petroleum industry, adsorption has get attention, because its efficiency in the treatment of effluents. Adsorption has been proposed because its advantages compared with other conventional purification process. Among the adsorbent materials, the biomass has great importance due to its low cost, availability, and easy disposal. Kinetics and equilibrium experiments used the biomass: corn cob, wooden, coconut mesocarp and sugar cane bagasse in their natural form, showed that coconut mesocarp and sugar cane bagasse had been adjusted to be used in fixed bed column showed values of 13 mUg de gasoline for biomass, Fixed bed experiments were made of adsorption of organic pollutants, using coconut mesocarp and sugar cane bagasse in synthetic showed that the experimental system adsorbed completely the organic contaminant. The obtained results adjusted well wit Thomas mode. A real effluent obtained in the oilfield Guamare, in the Rio Grande do Norte state of Brazil, was used in this work. Water with 100 and 50 ppm oil was treaded in a fixed bed column. Effluent concentration at the top of the fixed bed was analyzed by spectrophotometry. Breakthrough curves obtained from the experimental concentration were used to estimate adsorption parameters: adsorption capacity and mass transfer coefficient. The results obtained show that biomass is viable as adsorbent for organic pollutant and, once the appropriate hydrocarbons/biomass ratio is considered, it is possible to eliminate almost all contaminants in the wastewater and some heavy metals.