Jake,
I am going to play devil's advocate here and would love to hear some of the other responses to this, but have you broached these thoughts with your researchers? The waste stream you mentioned is primarily from column chromatography, where large volumes
of solvent are used to purify and isolate compounds. These same combinations ae used in thin layer chromatography to identify compounds as they come off of the column. I have broached the topic of distilling and reusing ethyl acetate and hexanes at two different
research institutions. In both cases the researchers were steadfast that they would not use reclaimed EtOAc or hexanes in their research due to purity concerns.
If you chose to pursue this, it would have to have buy in from the researchers and you most likely would have to have analytical testing demonstrating its purity before a researcher would ever consider using it.
On the other hand, if your undergraduate labs are also large consumers, you could potentially take the large volumes collected from the researchers and reuse as much as you can in the undergraduate labs where they are learning the techniques for TLC and
column chromatography, but not as concerned about product purity.
For the rest of the listserv: Have any other research institutions had any luck in getting their researchers to buy into reusing solvents processed in house?
Regards,
Brandon S. Chance, M.S., CCHO
Program Manager, Chemical Safety
Environmental Health and Safety
Princeton University
262 Alexander Street
Princeton, NJ 08540
609-258-7882 (office)
609-955-1289 (mobile)
609-258-1804 (fax)
"… our job in safety is to make the task happen, SAFELY; not to interfere with the work…" Neal Langerman
