ABSTRACT
In the production of antiophidic and antitoxic sera, it is common to use diatomaceous earth, which is a light mineral, with low specific mass and high adsorption potential, commonly employed in filtration processes. In order to reuse the residual earth from filtration processes of antiophidic and antitoxic sera of Fundação Ezequiel Dias, this work purposed its recuperation by thermal treatment. After Thermogravimetric Analysis of the residual diatomaceous earth, it was concluded that from 600°C all the impurities present in this material suffered degradation Thus, a sample of saturated mineral was heated in a muffle oven up to temperature of 700°C. Then, the influence of the thermal treatment in the mineral properties was evaluated by means of the determination of the physicochemical parameters pH, apparent density, dry basis moisture content and its adsorption potential in hiperimune horse plasma, the main characteristic for its application in the filtration process to obtain the sera. It was verified that the physicochemical properties of the recuperated material were very close to them of the new earth, being obtained percentage variations of 6.1% for pH, 12.8% for apparent density, 3.6% for basis moisture content and 1.4% in relation to relative adsorption percentage. Therefore, it was possible to infer that that the purposed thermal treatment did not vary its adsorption capability considerably, making possible to reuse it as a filtration agent in the sera production process.
Keywords
Diatomaceous earth; reuse; antiophidic serum; antitoxic serum
