Environmental and economic comparison of waste solvent treatment options |
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Authors: | Tamas Benko Agnes Szanyi Peter Mizsey Zsolt Fonyo |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Chemical Engineering, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Műegyetem rkp. 3, H-1521 Budapest, Hungary;(2) Research Group of Technical Chemistry, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Műegyetem rkp. 3, H-1521 Budapest, Hungary |
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Abstract: | The sustainable development and consumption need more efficient use of natural resources. As a consequence, the use of industrial
solvents demands their recovery instead of end-of-pipe treatment. It is not always clear, however, which treatment alternative
should be applied. Based on an industrial case study, the environmental and economic evaluation and comparison of the treatment
alternatives of a non-ideal solvent mixture containing azeotropes is investigated for determining the preferable option. For
the recovery of the industrial solvent mixture, two different separation alternatives are evaluated: a less effective alternative
and a novel design based on hybrid separation tools. An end-of-pipe treatment alternative, incineration, is also considered
and the split of the solvent mixtures between recovery and incineration is investigated. The environmental evaluation of the
alternatives is carried out using ‘Eco-indicator 99 life-cycle impact assessment methodology’. Economic investigation is also
accomplished. The economic features clearly favour the total recovery, however, the environmental evaluation detects that
if a recovery process of low efficiency is applied, its environmental burden can be similar or even higher than that of the
incineration. This motivates engineers to design more effective recovery processes and reconsider the evaluation of process
alternatives at environmental decision making. |
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Keywords: | Waste solvent treatment life cycle assessment |
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