Alcohol Recycling 101
You’ve been using alcohol for years and now you are thinking about recycling it. Great idea. You use a lot of alcohol and it would be good to save money by buying less. It doesn’t take a lot of training or special knowledge to recycle alcohol. But for those who are curious about the details of alcohol recycling anyway, this post is for you.
The good solvent and the contaminants have different boiling points. By paying attention to the boiling point (vapor temperature) you can separate the good (clean solvent) from the bad (contaminants).
Xylene Recycling 101
Tell me about the details of the xylene recycling process
Note: With regard to solvent recycling xylene and xylene substitutes are nearly interchangeable. In this blog post everything that applies to xylene will also be true of xylene substitutes.
You’ve been using xylene for years and now you are thinking about recycling it. Great idea. It’s expensive to buy and to dispose of. It doesn’t take a lot of training or special knowledge to recycle xylene. But for those who are curious about the details of xylene recycling anyway, this post is for you.
Formalin Recycling 101
You’ve been using formalin for years and now you are thinking about recycling it. Great idea. In most places formalin isn’t too expensive. But it is expensive to dispose of. Or maybe you are dumping it down the drain and are worried about the backlash if people find out.
Solvent recycling is great, especially if someone else does it for you
Solvent recycling in our lab? Sounds great but can’t somebody else do it for us?
A growing trend in hospitals is for Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) to recycle solvents for the Histology laboratory.
Reduce your waste generator status and save a ton of paperwork.
Labs spend significant sums on buying and disposing of histology solvents. Unseen to most, are the regulatory costs of complying with local and federal hazardous waste regulations. The more hazardous waste your facility generates, the greater the regulations.
Waste solvents from the lab are classified as hazardous waste by the US EPA. Depending on the amount of hazardous waste your facility generates, you are assigned to one of three hazardous waste generator categories.
What is fractional distillation?
If you need consistent, high quality recycled solvents, you need fractional distillation.
The good solvent and the contaminants have different boiling points. By paying attention to the boiling point (vapor temperature) you can separate the good (clean solvent) from the bad (contaminants).
Here is an example of the fractional distillation of xylene.
How much does it cost to operate a Solvent Recycler?
With a 20 liter (5 gallon) recycler you can easily recycler 5000 to 10000 liters (1300 to 2700 gallons) of solvent in a year. Typical operating costs to recycle 10000 liters of solvent would be about $200, or about $0.02 USD per liter ($0.07 USD per gallon).
It’s a great idea to understand all of the costs associated with recycling. The main costs are electrical power, operator time and consumables
See our solvent recycling products to help you achieve your sustainability goals
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