Comparação entre os métodos de recuperação de solvente industrial por destilação simples e fracionada

Abstract

Resin is one of the main components of paints. This raw material is responsible for film’s formation after drying, in other words, it corresponds to the solid part of the paint. During the resin’s production process a small amount of effluents is generated. In most cases, this liquid is composed by water and organic solvents. The generation of greater quantity of effluents occurs during the cleaning processes between the batches of each production process. The solvent used to clean the equipment gets contaminated with traces of resins. These effluents must be treated in a way that does not cause aggression to the environment. If this residue is subjected to a recovery process, it can be reused in subsequent cleanings, minimizing environmental impacts and generating of waste. The company where the study was carried out performs the recovery of solvents using the simple distillation technique. In this work, the technique of fractional distillation was applied in samples of solvent’s mixtures after the equipment cleaning process inside the company. The efficiency of the applied methods was compared using the gas chromatography technique, where toluene was predominant in the products obtained by both distillation processes.