Acetone recovery in laboratories wastes: an approach of aspects of management, operation and environmental efficiency

The objective of this work was to exclusively improve the management of wastes constituted mainly by organic solvents, due to the opportunities for improvements in the processing of such substances in the institution where the studies were realized. By means of the tests carried out in the distillation system using acetone as a reference, advantages and disadvantages were found with increasing/decreasing the temperature used in the process. From the use of gas chromatography, it was possible to obtain a more precise control of the quality of the recovered product and also to verify the high efficiency of the distillation process in the separation of the solvent from the other contaminants present in the waste. And in terms of comparison of treatments, distillation proved to be environmentally more sustainable and about 8 times more economical than incineration.