Estudos estruturais de hidrotalcitas e derivados por difração de raios X de policristais

Abstract

The search for catalysts and supports for catalysts used in the oil industry is growing, since the environmental laws are becoming stricter on releasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It is therefore necessary to reduce the amount of impurities in fuels without decreasing its efficiency. In this sense the hydrotalcite and its derivatives (simple and mixed oxides obtained by calcination) appear as alternative materials in the search for compounds that resist the specific conditions (such as high temperatures) in the procedures for processing oil. Thus, there is the need of understanding the crystal structure and physicochemical properties of these materials in order to determine processes that make them more efficient. The most widely used technique for structural characterization is X-ray diffraction (XRD) and for polycrystalline materials, the processing of data by the Rietveld method provides satisfactory and consistent results. Thus, this work describes the characterization by X-ray diffraction of powder samples, vibrational spectroscopy (infrared and Raman) and thermal analysis of five compounds used by the Research Center of Petrobras (CENPES) as catalysts or supports for selective hydrotreating catalysts. The five samples, called HTC1, HTC2, HTC3, ALU and MGO were properly characterized and, in addition, the products of calcination of HTC2 (called HT1000, HT1200 and HT800) and MGO (called MGO1200) were analyzed by FTIR spectroscopy and XRD. Calcination of these materials proved to be an alternative to the purification processes and controlled temperature confirmed the existence of the memory effect in lamellar structures. To address the XRD data were used FullProf and GSAS programs with which it was possible to determine the crystalline phases present in each sample and perform quantitative analysis of the samples HTC3 and MGO.