To whom ever: When a new wing of one of our
local high schools was being built the architecht included a waste
collection tank from the science wing. I would suggest that you
look at local law for your requirements to control waste materials
from going into the sewage treatment plant. The simplest solution
is to have a hazardous waste company pump your holding tank on a
regular basis so that the residual chemicals can be removed. For
a while there was some work discussed in CEN about the total
oxidation of waste waters by use of diamines, iron and hydrogen
peroxide. The heavy metals become sludge that can be filtered
out. The carbon compounds are total converted to carbon dioxide,
halogens are converted salts, etc.
Best of luck getting any of these suggestions implemented. There
is a simple engineering principle you may want to consider. Draw
a line around your laboratory in a virtual sense and then figure
out how to deal with all the inputs and outputs. The only
acceptable outputs are water, carbon dioxide (and not very much of
that) anything else has to be trapped, contained and sent to
hazardous waste handling.
Advice is cheap but doing something significant is often quite
difficult
From: Sylvia Tarin Brousseau <sock5108**At_Symbol_Here**aol.com> I am a drug chemist for DOJ. We routinely use mortars, pestles, etc. in the course of our analysis. Is there a sink filter (carbon?) to catch residual compounds being washed down the drain? We do have a neutralization tank that does some filtering. We have chemists that are worried about drugs (pharm and otherwise) appearing in the food chain due to the waste water. Any insight appreciated.
-- Walter Brooks, Ph.D. organic chemist, Florida State U. 1971 with 30 years of industrial experience. Federal Way, WA 98023 skoorb62**At_Symbol_Here**comcast.net 253-941-3854 please leave a message if you call
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