Cristalização e separação de KCI a partir de carnalita : síntese de processo, simulação e viabilidade econômica

Abstract

Due to the increasing demand for potassium in Brazil, it is feasible to exploit carnallite in order to supply part of the national need for this alkali metal, whose reserves of raw material - in this case sylvite - are depleted and, therefore, at imminent risk of scarcity. This work proposes to develop, simulate and verify the economic feasibility of the process of dissolution and crystallization of potassium chloride (KC1) from the Carnallite ore, based on theoretical and practical data available in the literature. By means of applied methods and observation of the results, it was verified that the reconstruction of the system diagram KCl-NaCl-MgCl2-H2O (Hoffman, 2004) and the obtaining of its representative equation presented positive results, verified during the comparison between values calculated in the equation and values collected from the original diagram. Another crucial factor in obtaining the equation is that it makes it possible to calculate the concentrations of potassium chloride (KCl) and magnesium chloride (MgCl2) at various temperatures, from 0ºC to 105ºC, which is more imprecise from the interpolation of the limited diagram temperatures. The proposed process provided more than 85% crystallization of potassium chloride, demonstrating its superior performance compared to existing procedures. In this work the simulation of 3 process trajectories was developed, with all its variables and results. These were effective for studies of the determination of the crystallization processes of potassium chloride (KCl) and its economic feasibility, since in Brazil the situation is of a market with great demand and possibility of expansion, an agricultural country and in full development of technologies to expand production, which may mean an increasing demand for potassium chloride (KCl) as fertilizer. The best simulated configuration (higher yield) provides a return rate of 93.71% of the capital invested in a year.