Caracterização mineralógica, química e solubilização do potássio de glauconita modificada

Demand for potassium in Brazil is large and is constantly increasing, but only about 5% of all consumed potassium is produced in the country. This low domestic production implies high rate of potassium imports, leaving the country vulnerable in the event of any difficulty to import this product and currency fluctuations. The modified glauconite is a rock that has a high potential for potassium exploration, found in Minas Gerais state, its extraction is relatively cheap and the prospected rock volume is high. The difficulty for its use as a direct source of potassium is in its low solubility. Thus, the objective of this study was to perform a chemical and mineralogical characterization of the modified glauconite and evaluate the effectiveness of techniques and treatments in the potassium solubilization contained in the rock. For this study, it was used characterization techniques such as X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, diffraction by Synchrotron Light and chemical analysis of high and low power of potassium extraction. Also granulometric testing and thermal treatments with different forms of calcination were carried out. Overall, it was found that the modified glauconite is a compound of minerals, of the mica groups K-feldspar and quartz and calcination substantially alter the crystal structure of these minerals, increasing the potassium availability. While the natural solubility of glauconite modified be very low, rock calcination added with high fluxes of calcium and low magnesium content at 1200 °C led to potassium solubility increase in order of 100 times compared to that observed in the glauconite natural modified.

Análise de experimentos fatoriais de dois fatores com tratamentos adicionais

Experiments using factorial arrangement of treatments are rather common and useful in agricultural research. The main advantage is the possibility of testing many hypotheses, allowing broader conclusions over different factors, studied simultaneously. Factorial arrangements are used to compare levels of each factor (main effects), and also to verify if the differences among levels of a given factor are dependent on the levels of the other factors (interacions). In the analysis of data from factorial experiments, difficulty is increased when additional treatments are included. Inclusion of one or more additional treatments is a quite common practice, since such treatments are usually taken as reference or standard for evaluation and comparasion of the remaimng treatments, or aiming complementary information. This increase of difficulty is however low, compared to the advantages. As in literature there are few references about the statistical analysis of factorial experiments with additonal treatments, and given straightforward use in experimentation, the objective of this work was the presentation of approach for the use of factorial experiments with additonal treatments trough the analysis of some examples using the SAS® software, with the corresponding theoretical development, obtaining the system of normal equations, estimators of the parameters and variance of contrasts among two treatment means. It is suggested that additional treatments should be used with caution. The analysis of variance of such kind of experiment was presented using matrix notation.