Diseño de un proceso de obtención de ácido húmico por hidrólisis ácida a partir de lombrihumus para la empresa de curtiembre El AL-CE.

Abstract

The objective consisted of designing an industrial-scale process to obtain humic acid from lombrihumus. For this, three assays at a lab level were carried out to determine, through infrared spectroscopy, wich one has a similar structure to that of the commercial humic acid, once the best result is obtained in such an analysis, the physical and chemical and biological characterization of the extracted humic acid was conducted and later the ahitation tank design was carried out, in which the acid hydrolysis process is performed for the extraction of humic substances so as to know about the process efficiency. The result obtained in the physical and chemical characterization of the finished product showed 0.10% Nitrogen an 9000 mg/L Potassium which are within the established parameters in the NTE INEN 0211 norm for a fertilizer determination, while in the biological characterization results were very good as the humic acid value was 30.68% and 10.82% for the fulvic acid, which are within the norm established in the REAL DRECREE 824 on fertilizing products; finally, once the process design was carried out at industrial scale, it was known that process efficacy was 98.76% according to the calculi performed for the equipment dimensioning, confirming three slight losses in the product obtainment process. With these results, it is established that the humic acid obtainment from the worm humus is feasible, thus yielding a farm and economic product, contributing to environment; nevertheless, it is recommended to carry out this acid hydrolysis process from other raw material to identify which process is better to obtain a humic acid percentage superior to the one obtained.