DETERMINAÇÃO SIMULTÂNEA DE METAIS EM ÁLCOOL COMBUSTÍVEL UTILIZANDO VOLTAMETRIA DE REDISSOLUÇÃO ANÓDICA EM MEIO ÁCIDO

Abstract

Brazil is pioneering in the use of ethanol as combustible. It is a renewable fuel that is contributing for to reduce the levels of CO2 emission in the atmosphere, but that present contaminant such as Zn, Cu, Cd, Fe, Cl, Ni, Co e Pb metals. The presence of heavy metals in fuel ethanol is obtained in different steps as production and storage of ethanol, therefore, the monitoring of these inorganic contaminants is of fundamental importance for the quality of the fuel ethanol. Due to high sensibility of stripping voltammetric techniques for quantification of heavy metals and a few number of works in the literature for this kind of matrix, the objective of this work was optimize a procedure in order to contribute to this important subject that is the determination of metal trace in fuel ethanol, using a mercury film electrode (MFE). The following parameters were optimized: supporting electrolyte concentration, preconcentration time, deposition potential, scan rate, pulse amplitude, pH and composition of the reaction medium. Sensitivity was evaluated through the peak current in the simultaneous determination of Cd(II), Pb(II) and Cu(II) metal ions. The results optimized were: concentration HNO3: 5,0 x 10-3 mol.L-1, tpre: 6 minute, Edep: -700 mV, pH: 2.0 and composition of the water/ethanol mix solution (80/20%). Concentrations of Cd(II), Pb(II) and Cu(II) were studied in the concentration range between 2,0 x 10-9 and 1,0 x 10-8 mol.L-1 and the analytical curves presented good correlation coefficients (near 1,0) and sensitivity amperometric with the following values for Cd(II), Pb(II) e Cu(II) metal ions, respectively: 37.5 A.L.mol-1, 31.5 A.L.mol-1 e 77.4 A.L.mol-1. The detection limits found for Cd(II), Pb(II) and Cu(II) were of 4.2 x 10-10 mol.L-1, 4.6 x 10-10 mol.L-1 and 9.0 x 10-10 mol.L-1, respectively. The quantification limits were 1.4 x 10-9 mol.L-1, 1.5 x 10-9 mol.L-1 and 2.0 x 10-9 mol.L-1 for Cd(II), Pb(II) and Cu(II), respectively. The application of the optimized procedure in commercial fuel ethanol sample presented a good analytical performance and the concentrations of the metals were obtained by standard addiction method, presenting the following results: 4.7 x 10-8 mol.L-1 for Pb(II) and 1.7 x 10-7 mol.L-1 for Cu(II). Cd(II) was not detected on these samples. The statistical evaluation presented good results of precision (CV) for Pb(II) 18.7% and Cu(II) 8.63 %. The proposed method was compared with Graphite Furnace Atomic Absorption Spectrometry (GFAAS) for quantification the metallic species in commercial fuel ethanol and the results showed good agreement among the two techniques