Estudio de las propiedades de la ceniza proveniente de la combustión en la caldera de la Empresa Endesa-Botrosa para la obtención de zeolita.

Abstract

The following investigation's objective was to carry out a study of the characteristics of the ash coming from the combustion in the boiler of the company ENDESA-BOTROSA to obtain zeolite. The methodology used to achieve the proposed objective was to characterize with physical-chemical parameters such as humidity, percentage of unburned, pH, conductivity, the concentration of aluminum, silicon and heavy metals in general. The fly ash showed a concentration of 451 mg/kg of aluminum and 8560 mg/kg of silicon, in addition to having concentrations of heavy metals, suitable for obtaining zeolite. Consequently, the respective experiment was designed with an initial stage of pretreatment that consisted of the elimination of unburned by calcination, it uses a wash with 10% hydrochloric acid to remove iron impurities, precipitation of excess chlorides by the Mohr method and drying generated a decrease in the weight of ash equivalent to 6.96% in the elimination of unburned and 33.79% for the rest of the pretreatment applied. Tests were carried out with different mass ratios between sodium hydroxide and ash pretreated by the alkaline fusion method without presenting significant differences between the efficiency in the lead removal in water, obtaining in all cases a percentage greater than 99.5%. However, the ideal mass ratio was determined as 2 to 1 (Z20) to maximize the yield of the process in 30.901% and to present significant differences with the average of the remaining experimental data. The presence of zeolite in the sample Z20 was corroborated by an X-ray diffraction analysis in 41.86% as a mixture of zeolite materials among which the most important in weight is the Anortite, a type X zeolite. In addition, it used an infrared spectroscopy analysis where there were the transmittance peaks in the previous investigation