Waste Minimization

    The concept is simple really.   "Waste" describers material that was not used for its intended
purpose or

 unwanted material produced as a consequence of another process.  In the chemical industry,

waste is either considered inert or contaminated.  Inert waste can be recycled or released into the
environment.  Malformed polymer or leaking steam may be considered inert wastes, although
they are not chemically inert.  Wastewater is a type of contaminated waste that needs to be
treated before the components can be recycled or released to the
environment.  No matter what type of waste you have, waste costs
money.  Malformed polymer is either sold as scrap for much less than the properly formed parts
or it has to be reprocessed.  Either scenario costs a company money.  Treating wastewater is
certainly an expensive endeavor.  In short, there is much motivation to minimize waste in the
chemical and other industries.

Recovering Materials

Example
Technology Description Economics Types of Waste
Applications

Tanks or ponds Relatively

provide hold-up time inexpensive; Slurries or streams with Industrial
Gravity Settling allowing solids to
dependent on particle suspended solids wastewatertreatment
settle size and settling rate
Collection devices Labor intensive,
such as screens, relatively
Aqueous solutions with Polymer filtration,
Filtration cloth, or other; inexpensive,
finely divided solids wastewater, etc.
liquids pass and additional energy
solids are retained needed for pumping
Air bubbled liquid to Refinery oil/water
collect fine solids Relatively Aqueous solutions with mixtures, paper
Floatation that rise to surface inexpensive finely divided solids wastes; mineral
with bubbles industry
Agent added to Refinery oil/water
aggregate solids to Relatively Aqueous solutions with mixtures, paper
Flocculation together to facilitate inexpensive finely divided solids wastes; mineral
separation industry
Spinning of mixtures
and centrifugal force
Competitive with Liquid/liquid or
Centrifugation causes separation by Paints
filtration liquid/solid separations
differences in
densities
 Boiling off materials
by taking advantage
Distillation of differences in Energy intensive Organic liquids Solvent separations
boiling points

Solvent recovery by
boiling off the Organic/Inorganic Rinse waters from
Evaporation solvent Energy intensive
aqueous streams metal plating waste

Waste streams pass

through resin bed
Heavy metal aqueous
Ion Exchange where ionic Relatively high costs Metal plating solutions
solutions
materials are
selectively removed
Separation of
molecules by size Heavy metal aqueous Metal coating
Ultrafiltration using membrane Relatively high costs
solutions applications

Separation of
dissolved materials Heavy metals; organics,
Reverse Seldom used
from liquid through Relatively high costs inorganic aqueous
Osmosis industrially
a membrane solutions

Separation of
positively charged Heavy metals; ions from
Dependent on
Electrolysis materials by aqueous solutions; Metal plating
concentrations
application of copper recovery
electric current
Dissolved materials Relatively costly
selectively absorbed Organic/inorganics from
Carbon thermal regeneration
in carbon aqueous solutions with Metal plating
absorption needed; energy
low concentrations
intensive
Solvent used to
Solvent selectively dissolve Organic liquids, phenols,
solid or extract Relatively high costs Recovery of dyes
Extraction acids
liquid from waste

Chemical reaction
caused formation of Metal plating
Precipitation solids which settle Relatively high costs Lime slurries
wastewater treatment

Separation based on
differential rates of Moderately Separation/concentration
Separation of acids
Electrodialysis diffusion through of ions from aqueous
expensive and metallic solutions
membranes streams

Pyrolysis in
atmosphere of excess Insufficient U.S. Carbon tetrachloride
Chlorinolysis chlorine market for carbon Chlorocarbon wastes
manufacturing
tetrachloride
 Oxidative state of
chemical changed Chrome plating
Metals, mercury in dilute
Reduction through chemical Inexpensive solutions and tanning
streams
reaction operations

Thermal conversion
Thermal of components Chlorinated organic Recovery of sulfur,
Relatively high costs
Oxidation liquids; silver hydrochloric acid

Batch Operations

    When you think of a batch operation, you may not think that these smaller units
produce much waste.  To the contrary, batch operations produce much more waste per
unit product than do continuous processes.   Traditionally, manufacturers using batch
operations could afford this high waste content thanks to the high value of their
products.  In recent years, waste has become more and more expensive to deal with
while competition has forced product value down.  What has raised the cost of waste
"production"?  Increased solvent prices and fees for environmental permitting and
monitoring emissions.
    Each run of a batch process differs in many aspects.  Waste generation is no
exception.  For example, one run may yield 1.5 lbs. of unwanted by-product while a
small pressure variation in the next run causes 1.7 lbs. of waste to be produced. 
Waste handling equipment must be designed to handle the worst case scenario waste
production conditions.  Careful control of reaction conditions can help minimize
waste in such applications.  Reactor loading and unloading are also opportunities to
minimize waste.
    During reactor loading, add solids before liquids.  This will minimize the amount of
time that a most likely volatile liquid is in contact with the atmosphere.  If possible,
use a solvent with a lower vapor pressure to minimize evaporation losses.  Consider
using a hopper specific to your solids.  Some hoppers allow locking of the process
vessel to minimize vapor losses.  Also, some hoppers are available to open and
distribute solids packaged in bags (cut-in hoppers).
    During batch reactor operations, consider using a vapor recycling system if
necessary.  The cumulative effects can be well worth the investment.   Install gaskets
on all vessel openings.  Use statistical process control (SPC) to regulate reactions
rather than using intermediate testing.  When discharging the reactor, try to allow the
reactor to cool as much as possible to limit volatile organic compounds from leaking.

Process Modifications

Raw Materials
    Feed quality is very important in waste minimization.  Working with suppliers to
improve feed quality reduce waste dramatically.  Even small impurities can lead to
giant amounts of waste.  For example, a specific feed impurity may speed up catalysts
degradation which in turn produces waste that must be separated from final products. 
Even if these impurities are not a compromise of your quality and are left in the
product, it may increase the waste in your customer's process.   Raw materials can
also be evaluated for reduction or elimination.  Consider a company that uses algae
inhibitor in their cooling tower.  By shielding their tower from the sun, they quickly
found that they could reduce their inhibitor use by half.

Reactors
   The transition from laboratory to industrial scale can sometimes see a drastic change
in product yield if proper mixing is not employed.  By using static mixers before the
reactor, by-product yield can be minimized.  Constant searching for better catalyst
materials can also help a reactor operate at peak efficiency.  Consider a separate,
smaller reactor for recycle streams.  Optimum conditions for recycle streams can vary
from those used for fresh feeds.  A separate reactor allows these different, optimum
conditions to be used.

Distillation Columns
    Distillation columns contribute to waste by allowing impurities to remain in the
product.  The solutions to this problem include ways to better separations.  It is critical
that engineers analyze the cost of waste treatment and the additional energy costs
required for better separations.  At times, the additional energy may be much more
expensive than waste treatment.  Separations can be bettered by the following
methods:
1.  Increased reflux ratio
2.  Additional trays
3.  Changing feed location
4.  Insulating column
5.  Pre-heating column feed
6.  Increasing size of vapor lines
    Columns can also produce significant waste due to inadequate condensation.  The
vapor can find its way to a vent or flare and add to atmospheric pollution and result in
costly fines.  Be sure your condenser is operating properly.

Specific Examples

Acrylonitrile
   Acrylonitrile production in the U.S. was 1.45 million metric tons in 1995.  Each
metric ton of acrylonitrile manufactured requires 400 metric tons of cooling water for
process use.  Typically, about 0.5% of cooling water is discarded to prevent buildup
of slime and solids during recirculation.  This discarded water (called blowdown)
contains toxins used as bactericides and fungicides and should be considered
hazardous.  For every 400 metric tons of cooling water used (per ton of product), 2
metric tons of wastewater are generated.  That's a total of about 2.9 million metric
tons of wastewater produced from the acrylonitrile industry in the U.S. alone.
    Assuming a waste treatment cost of $0.08 per gallon, the waste treatment costs per
ton of product are:
(2000 kg water) x ($0.08/gallon water) / (3.785 kg/gallon water) = $42 per ton of
product
A closed loop refrigerant system could perform the necessary cooling duty for around
$17 per ton of product.  For a 100,000 ton/year facility, this could result in a saving of
around $2.5 million annually.  Assume a total plant cost of $400 million.  The cooling
water system would cost 2% of the total plant cost while the refrigeration system
would cost twice as much.  This puts the refrigeration system cost at $16 million.  It's
likely that over the life of the plant (especially with tightening regulations), the
refrigeration system will easily pay for itself.   Not to mention that is helps keep waste
generation to almost nothing.

Paint Stripping
   The U.S. Air Force spends much of their time stripping paint from equipment and
repainting.  Typically, a methylene chloride solvent is applied, followed by scraping,
washing with water (contaminating thousands of gallons), hand sanding, and buffing.
    Hill Air Force Base in Ogden, Utah decided to try a different way.   They use tiny
plastic beads in a blasting technique (similar to sandblasting) to remove the paint. 
The only waste is pulverized paint, while the plastic beads can be separated and
recycled.   Below we'll compare the costs associated with stripping one F-4 aircraft.

Chemical Plastic bead

 
Stripping stripping
Waste solids generated 9767 lbs sludge 320 lbs dry waste
Waste water generated 200,000 gallons ---
Hazardous solid disposal $967 $32
Waste water treatment $1,485 ---
Investment N/A $647,389
Raw material costs $5,422 $346
Energy costs $231 $127

**Payback occurs after approximately 80 similar sized aircrafts have been stripped

PVC Manufacturing
   During the production of polyvinylchloride (PVC), waste streams of HCl are produced.  These
streams are traditionally handled in one of two ways.   Chlorinolysis uses the HCl stream to
produce carbon tetrachloride.  This process requires high temperature and pressure as well as
significant capital investments.   In the past, this investment could be justified through the
revenue produced by selling carbon tetrachloride.  As the carbon tetrachloride market has grown
weaker, the HCl has become more valuable as a reactant in the PVC process rather than the
carbon tetrachloride reaction.  Thus most plants utilizing the oxychlorination method of PVC
production are using catalytic fluidized bed reactors to recycle the HCl to the process.   This is a
perfect example of how the chemical market can influence waste minimization.

Sulfuric Acid Reduction at Standard Uniform Services

    Standard Uniform sought a cost effective replacement for sulfuric acid used to adjust the pH
of its wastewater to levels required by discharge permits.  One of Standard Uniform's customers
in the industrial gas business suggested using carbon dioxide to alter the pH.  Below the
economics over a 10 year period are shown:

  H2SO4 System CO2 System
Installation --- $650
Raw Materials $14,000 $45,000
Permit Filing $29,500 ---
Equipment Replacement $100,000 $20,000
TOTAL $143,500 $65,650