Attività

Solvent Recovery

Solvent recovery is a form of waste reduction. In–process solvent recovery still is widely used as an alternative to solvent replacement to reduce waste generation. It is attractive, like end–of–pipe pollution control, since it requires little change in existing processes. There is widespread commercial availability of solvent recovery equipment which is another attraction. Availability of equipment suitable for small operations, especially batch operations, make in–process recovery of solvents economically preferable to raw materials substitution.

Commercially available solvent recovery equipment include:

Carbon adsorption of solvent, removal of the solvent by steam, and separation of the solvent for reuse in the operation. Carbon must be regenerated, two or more units are required to keep the operations continuous. Chloric acid formation from chlorinated solvents, carbon bed plugging by particulates, and buildup of certain volatile organics on the carbon and corrosion can be a problem.

Distillation and condensation can be used to separate and recover solvent from other liquids. Removal efficiency can be very high using this process and can be used for solvent mixtures as well as single solvents.

Dissolving the solvent in another material such as scrubbing. Solvents must be then recovered from the resulting solution, through distillation but efficiency of removal is often not high using this method.