Determinação voltamétrica de compostos de enxofre de baixo peso molecular em amostras de asfalto

Abstract

The content of sulfur compounds in asphalt is related to parameters of quality as reactivity, corrosiveness, toxicity and potential polluter, among others. In this work, a method for simultaneous determination of inorganic and organic low molecular weight sulfur compounds was developed. The analytes were stripped from asphaltic samples by gaseous diffusion. For the simultaneous determination of inorganic (20 to 100 μg L-1) and organics (80 to 400 μg L-1) sulfides, Cathodic Stripping Voltammetric (CSV) was used, with the mercury electrode operating at the HMDE mode in hydrazine 0.05 mol L-1 pH 2.3 solution as support electrolyte. The same conditions were used to speciate methanethiol (25 to 125 μg L-1) and propanethiol (30 to 150 μg L-1) through curve derivation. The calculated quantification limits were 0.22 μg L-1 for inorganic sulfide, 0.30 μg L-1 for organic sulfides; 1.08 μg L-1 for methanethiol and 0.16 μg L-1 for propanethiol. For studies concerning gaseous diffusion in asphaltic matrices, H2SO4 1.5 mol L-1 (ionic strength 4.5 mol L-1) was used as donor solution and NaOH 0,1 mol L -1 as the acceptor one. Diffusion intervals of 20 and 30 minutes under stirring were used to separate the analytes from the matrices. For crude asphalt samples, recoveries of 49% for organic sulfides and 100% for inorganic sulfide were obtained and, 40% for organic sulfides and 83% for inorganic sulfide were obtained for asphalt fraction samples.