Waste minimization methods for treating analyticl instrumentation effluents at the source

Recently there has been increasing interest in minimizing analytical laboratory wastes. The driving forces behind this interest are the ever increasing costs and liabilities associated with waste disposal. Thus, many analytical laboratories, like the Defense Waste Processing Technology-Analytical Laboratory (DWPT-AL), located at the Savannah River Site (SRS), are looking into treating their own wastes. The DWPT-AL operates four laboratory modules that produce hazardous liquid effluents from the analytical instrumentation: Spectroscopy, Chromatography I, Chromatography II, and Wet Chemistry. The hazardous waste from these modules is being sent to SRS Waste Management at a cost of approximately $13,000 per drum, which corresponds to approximately $325,000 to $520,000 per year. If the hazardous characteristics of and the hazardous components in the analytical instrument effluents or example preparation wastes can be altered and/or reduced in such a way as to render the stream non-hazardous, the large volume of non-hazardous waste can be disposed of via process drains. Therefore, the primary goal of this project was to reduce the amount of hazardous waste being generated by the DWPT-AL, thereby substantially reducing the costs associated with its disposal. A secondary goal was to develop in-line methods using primarily adsorption/ion exchange columns that can be used to treat the liquid effluent as it emerges from the analytical instrument as a slow, dripping flow. The second goal allows the treatment method to become part of the operating procedure associated with the instrument; thus, the effluent would not be considered a waste until it emerges from the in-line column