Separation of Light Liquid Paraffin C5–C9 with Cuban Volcanic Glass Previously Used in Copper Elimination from Water Solutions

Miguel Autie-Pérez,Enrique Rodríguez-Castellón,Juan Labadie-Suárez,Antonia Infantes-Molina,Juan Cecilia

doi:10.3390/app8020295

Miguel Autie-Pérez, Enrique Rodríguez-Castellón + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/app8020295

Copy DOI

Abstract

Featured Application: In this work, an inexpensive and available material, as volcanic glass, is used to absorb metals from wastewater and then it is used to the separation of light liquid-olefins.Abstract: Raw porous volcanic glass from Cuba was used as an adsorbent for Cu2+ removal from dyes after activation with an acid solution. After Cu2+ adsorption, it was also evaluated its capacity to separate n-paraffins from a mixture by inverse gas chromatography (IGC), and the results were compared with those obtained with bare volcanic glass without copper. The main goal of this work is to highlight the great applicability of natural volcanic glass, which can be reused without pretreatment as an adsorbent. The results from copper adsorption were quite promising, considering the availability and low cost of this material; the sample without acid treatment turned out to be the most adequate to remove copper. Moreover, the results from IGC revealed that the separation of paraffins from the mixture was achieved with both bare volcanic glass and glass containing Cu, although greater heat adsorption values were obtained when copper was present in the sample due to the stronger interaction between paraffin and copper. The high availability and low cost of this porous material make it a potential and attractive candidate to be used in both heavy metal removal and paraffin separation for industrial purposes.

Highlights

Despite the decline in oil reserves, dependence on the petrochemical industry is still high, since there is no alternative energy source able to satisfy the demands of the world’s population
The use of membranes, cryogenic distillation, and absorption have emerged as potential methods for the separation of paraffin/olefin [2,3,4,5]
The elemental bulk composition of volcanic glass evaluated from X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometer (XRFS) analysis shows how this material is mainly composed and Si and Al, with small proportions of

Summary

Introduction

Despite the decline in oil reserves, dependence on the petrochemical industry is still high, since there is no alternative energy source able to satisfy the demands of the world’s population. Treatment of crude gives rise to a range of valuable products, such as fuels, waxes, asphalt, polymers, plastics, paints, tires, and detergents. Among the most important oil fractions are the short paraffins (Cn H2n+2 ), since these compounds are main components of fuel and natural gas that have relatively low toxicity, because their combustion only generates CO2. A challenge for the petrochemical industry is olefin/paraffin separation, since both display similar physicochemical properties [1]. The use of membranes, cryogenic distillation, and absorption have emerged as potential methods for the separation of paraffin/olefin [2,3,4,5].

Objectives

Results

Conclusion