Remoção de óleo da água de produção por flotação em coluna utilizando tensoativos de origem vegetal

In the petroleum industry, water is always present in the reservoir formation together with petroleum and natural gas and this fact provokes the production of water with petroleum, resulting in a great environmental impact. Several methods can be applied for treatment of oily waters, such as: gravitational vases, granulated media filtration systems, flotation process, centrifugation process and the use of hydrocyclones, which can also be used in a combined way. However, the flotation process has showed a great efficiency as compared with other methods, because these methods do not remove great part of the emulsified oil. In this work was investigated the use of surfactants derived from vegetable oils, OSS and OGS, as collectors, using the flotation process in a glass column with a porous plate filter in its base for the input of the gaseous steam. For this purpose, oil/water emulsions were prepared using mechanical stirring, with concentrations around 300 ppm. The air flow rate was set at 700 cm3/min and the porous plate filter used for the generation of the air bubbles has pore size varying from 16 to 40 Pm. The column operated at constant volume (1500mL). A new methodology has been developed to collect the samples, where, instead of collecting the water phase, it was collected the oil phase removed by the process in the top of the flotation column. It has been observed that it is necessary to find an optimum surfactant concentration to achieve enhanced removal efficiency. Being for OSS 1.275 mmol/L and for OGS 0.840 mmol/L, with removal efficiencies of 93% and 99%, respectively, using synthetic solutions. For the produced water, the removal in these concentrations was 75% for OSS and 65% for OGS. It is possible to remove oil from water in a flotation process using surfactants of high HLB, fact that is against the own definition of HLB (Hydrophile-Lipophile Balance). The interfacial tension is an important factor in the oil removal process using a flotation process, because it has direct interference in the coalescence of the oil drops. The spreading of the oil of the air bubble should be considered in the process, and for the optimum surfactant concentrations it reached a maximum value. The removal kinetics for the flotation process using surfactants in the optimum concentration has been adjusted according to a first order model, for synthetic water as for the produced water.

Extração de ferro da cera de carnaúba utilizando sistemas microemulsionados

The constant search for biodegradable materials for applications in several fields shows that carnauba wax can be a viable alternative in the manufacturing of biolubricants. Carnauba wax is the unique among the natural waxes to have a combination of properties of great importance. In previous studies it was verified the presence of metals in wax composition that can harm the oxidative stability of lubricants. Considering these factors, it was decided to develop a research to evaluate iron removal from carnauba wax, using microemulsion systems (Me) and perform the optimization of parameters, such as: extraction pH, temperature, extraction time, among others. Iron concentration was determined by atomic absorption and, to perform this analysis, sample digestion in microwave oven was used, showing that this process was very efficient. It was performed some analysis in order to characterize the wax sample, such as: attenuated total reflectance infrared spectroscopy (ATR-IR), thermogravimetry (TG), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (EDXRF), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and melting point (FP). The microemulsion systems were composed by: coconut oil as surfactant, n-butanol as cosurfactant, kerosene and/or heptanes as oil phase, distilled water as water phase. The pH chosen for this study was 4.5 and the metal extraction was performed in finite experiments. To evaluate Me extraction it was performed a factorial design for systems with heptane and kerosene as oil phase, also investigating the influence of temperature time and wax/Me ratio, that showed an statistically significant answer for iron extraction at 95% confidence level. The best result was obtained at 60°C, 10 hours contact time and 1: 10 wax/Me ratio, in both systems with kerosene and heptanes as oil phase. The best extraction occurred with kerosene as oil phase, with 54% iron removal

Caracterização e aplicação de sistemas micelares e microemulsionados como inibidores de corrosão

Corrosion is an important phenomenon that frequently occurs in the oil industry, causing surface ablation, such as it happens on the internal surfaces of oil pipes. This work aims to obtain new systems to reduce this specific problem. The surfactants SDS, CTAB, and UNITOL L90 (in micellar and microemulsionated systems) were used as corrosion inhibitors. The systems were obtained using a C/S ratio of 2, butanol as cosorfactant, kerosene as oil phase and, as water phase, NaCl solutions of 0.5M with pH = 2, 4, and 7. Microemulsion regions were found both for direct and inverse micelles. SDS had the higher microemulsion region and the area was not dependent of pH. The study of micellization of these surfactans in the liquid-gas interface was carried out via the determination of CMC from surface tension measurements. Regarding microemulsionated systems, in the case of CTAB, CMC increased when pH was increased, being constant for SDS and UNITOL L90. Concerning micellar systems, increase in pH caused decrease and increase in CMC for SDC and CTAB, respectively. In the case of UNITOL L90, CMC was practically constant, but increased for pH = 4. The microemulsionated systems presented higher CMC values, except for UNITOL L90 L90. The negative values of free energy of micellization indicated that the process of adsorption was spontaneous. The results also indicated that, comparing microemulsionated to systems, adsorption was less spontaneous in the case of SDS and CTAB, while it did not change for UNITOL L90. SAXS experiments indicated that micelle geometry was spherical, existing also as halter and flat micelles, resuting in a better inght on the adsorption at the liquid-solid interface. Efficiency of corrosion inhibition as determined by electrochemical measurements, from corrosion currents calculated from Tafel extrapolation indicuting heat showed surfactants to be efficient even at low concentrations. Equilibrium isotherm data were fitted to the Freundlich model, indicating that surfactant adsorption occurs in the form of multilayers

Utilização de microemulsão na remoção da cor de efluentes têxteis contendo corantes dispersos

Polyester fibers are the most used fibers in the world and disperse dyes are used for dyeing these fibers. After dyeing, the colorful dyebath is discharged into effluent streams, which needs a special treatment for color removal. Surfactants interaction with dyes has been evaluated in several studies, including the textile area, specifically in the separation of dyes from textile wastewater. In this work a cationic surfactant was used in a microemulsion system for the extraction of anionic dyes (disperses dyes) from textile wastewater. These microemulsion system was composed by dodecylamonium chloride (surfactant), kerosene oil (organic phase), isoamyl alcohol (cosurfactant) and the wastewater (aqueous phase). The wastewater that results after the dyeing process is acid (pH 5). It was observed that changing the pH value to above 12.8 the extraction could be made, resulting in an aqueous phase with low color level. The Scheffé net experimental design was used for the extraction process optimization, and the obtained results were evaluated using the program "Statistica 7.0". The optimal microemulsion system was composed by 59.8wt.% of wastewater, 30.1wt.% of kerosene, 3.37wt.% of surfactant and 6.73wt.% of cosurfactant, providing extraction upper than 96%. A mix of reactive dyebath (50%) and disperse dyebath (50%) was used as aqueous phase and it presented extraction upper than 98%. The water phase after extraction process can be reused in a new dyeing, being obtained satisfactory results, according to the limits established by textile industry for a good dyeing. Tests were accomplished seeking to study the influence of salt addition and temperature. An experimental design was used for this purpose, which showed that the extraction doesn't depend on those factors. In this way, the removal of color from textile wastewater by microemulsion is a viable technique (that does not depend of external factors such as salinity and temperature), being obtained good extraction results even with in wastewater mixtures