Title: Author and coauthors Filiations: Abstract Keywords: chemical treatment, elephant grass ash, potassium, pozolanic activity,

waste agroindustry.

Introduction Energy cogeneration (Ernesto, cordeiro) Mineral addition Potassium extraction

The work presented here is part of an extensive study aimed to allow the use of elephant grass ash as pozolanic material. Material and Methods Materials The elephant grass (Pennisetum purpureum) was collected from a campus of the University of So Paulo. (fala que partes da planta foi usado, a forma que foi preparado para queima corte secagem, diminuio da partcula) The ashes were obtained by burned control in an electrical furnace with a 10 C/min heating rate, first at 400 C for 20 min, and then at 700 C for 60 min, as presented in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Burning conditions of sugar cane straw

Treatment It was make two cleaned to extraction of potassium: the clear it was making in the grass (EGC) (DELLA et al., 2006) then it was burning and gets the ash, the other clear it was make in the ash (LIMA et al., 2011). The both cleaning used the acid chloridric (HCl) solution and compared with the ash without the cleaning. The first clear, it was used 10% v/v of HCl in 1000 mL for 60g of grass, so that solution was heating and when boiled over stay it stirring during 2 h. The second one, used 3% v/v of HCl in 500 mL to 50,5 g of ash, then it was stay for 1h / 90C with agitation. Thus, we have three treatments (Table 1). Table 1. Treatment WC Without the clear CG Clear in the grass CA Clear in the ash

Elephant Grass ash characterization

The samples, in its natural condition, were analyzed by morphology characterization. For the mineralogical and physical characterization the samples were previously ground. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) studies were carried out using a Hitachi Analytical instrument, model TM3000. The acquisition program was TM3000 and the program to quantify was SwifED. Granulometric distributions of ashes were measured using a Shimadzu Sald-201V apparatus which allows an analysis of particles by laser diffraction from 0.5 to 500 m, in liquid mode as dispersant. Mineralogical characterization of the ashes was carried out by the X-ray diffractions, with the purpose to know the structure of the analyzed material. X-ray difractograms were obtained using a Panalytical XPert Pro with X Celerator and data were compared in International Centre for Diffraction Data and Panalytical Inorganic Crystal Structure Database.

Measurements recorded in 2 = 5-70 intervals at a step angle of 0.02 and acquisition time of 2 s per step. Chemical composition was carried out by X-ray fluorescence with the PANalytical X Axios Advanced apparatus. The loss on ignition (LOI) of the ash was determined by heating the sample up to 950 C + 50 C according to ASTM C-114 [2003] recommendations, and was calculated as Equation 1:

W110 = weight of the sample oven-dried (110 C + 10 C) W950 = weight of the sample calcinated in a furnace (950 C + 50 C) CONDUTIVIDADE Calcium hydroxide (CH) and deionized water were used in electrical conductivity analysis.

PRXIMA REUNIO: 19/04/2012

LIMA, Samantha Pinheiro Bus de et al. Production of silica gel from residual rice husk ash. Qum. Nova [online]. 2011, vol.34, n.1, pp. 71-75. ISSN 0100-4042.