4 ms·

I know nothing of chemistry in a professional setting. What happens to all the byproducts and stuff you use to clean? I assume you can't just dump everything in

• rubicks 3y ago
  My lab actually did have 88-gallon barrels for waste; one each for aqueous waste, organic waste, and ether waste. Ether waste was kept separate because we produced a lot of it and because it had to be treated with preservatives to prevent the formation of explosive peroxides. Anywho, the old base had to be (gently) neutralized with acid before being dumped into the aqueous waste barrel. This had to be done slowly because exothermicity and dissolution heat. Iirc, the waste barrels were taken back by Sigma Aldrich, to be batched, filtered, and re-distilled into reagent-grade solvents. Circle of life.
• jandrewrogers 3y ago
  The waste is sorted by type e.g. if it contains heavy metal salts versus nasty organics. Quite a lot of this is recycled. Heavy metal concentrates are cheaper to refine than fresh ore; quite a few labs sell their waste to companies that extract the underlying metals. Nasty organics are often incinerated, which renders them harmless. There is an entire industry around optimally managing chem lab waste. It doesn’t go to the landfill unless it has been thoroughly processed for both value and toxicity. Industrial chemistry is a low-margin business, companies extract every bit of value from their waste stream that they can.