Aplicações ambientais de argilominerais modificados por tratamento ácido: a busca por materiais ecoamigáveis

Abstract

Water is an essential resource for all living things and it is vital to a wide variety of industrial processes. However, water quality and availability have been affected by its inappropriate use, causing worldwide impacts. Therefore, many studies have been focusing on applying environmentally friendly chemical processes that aims to decrease the extent of environmental impacts in recent years. For instance, promising techniques that involve adsorption processes has gained much attention lately, where the use of clay minerals as catalysts and industrial adsorbents play an important role considering the fact that they are both non toxic and economically viable. Despite their important applicability, it is well known that the efficiency of an adsorption processes may be increased by carrying out treatments in the adsorbent material (eg. acid-treated clays). Thus, the present work aims at contributing to useful information for better understanding the effects of acid treatments in the agalmatolite and kaolinite structures as well as the influences of the removal of coomassie blue and tropaeolin dyes, in an optimized process applying response surface methodology. The results show that the treatment applied in both clays was very promising, providing higher levels of adsorption when compared to the starting material.