Wastes minimization

Although waste minimization is not specifically addressed in the HAZ-WOPER standard, it does represent a management practice that supports worker and equipment decontamination. Waste minimization practices help to protect the environment and decrease project costs 

Occupational Safety and Health Guidance Manual for Hazardous Waste Site Activities. Prepared by National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSHj, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), U.S. Coast Guard (USCG), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), October 1985, pp. 9-2, 10-2-10-7. 

Handbook for Occupational Health and Safety During Hazardous Waste Activities. Office of Environmental, Safety and Health Office of Environmental Management, 1996, pp. 8-1-8-9. 

Model Curriculum for Training Asbestos Abatement Contractors and Supervisors. Safety Health and Ergonomics Branch Electro-Optics, Environment, and Materials Laboratory, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Cooperative Agreement No. CX 820760-010-0, pp. X-6, X-7, X-8. 

Unless employers ean demonstrate that their operation does not involve employee exposure or the reasonable possibility for employee exposure to safety or health hazards, they should eomply with the standard. To determine if your partieular situation is eovered by the emergeney response provisions of the standard, examine the tasks of your workers to determine if they will be assigned a role or funetion as part of a response to a release of hazardous waste [2]. 

As with safety, environmental considerations are usually left to a late stage in the design. However, like safety, early decisions often can lead to difficult environmental problems which later require complex solutions. Again, it is better to consider effluent problems as the design progresses in order to avoid complex waste treatment systems. 

The effects of pollution can be direct, such as toxic emissions providing a fatal dose of toxicant to fish, animal life, and even human beings. The effects also can be indirect. Toxic materials which are nonbiodegradable, such as waste from the manufacture of insecticides and pesticides, if released to the environment, are absorbed by bacteria and enter the food chain. These compounds can remain in the environment for long periods of time, slowly being concentrated at each stage in the food chain until ultimately they prove fatal, generally to predators at the top of the food chain such as fish or birds. 

Thus emissions must not exceed levels at which they are considered harmful. There are two approaches to deal with emissions  

Treat the effluent using incineration, biplogical digestion, etc. to a form suitable for discharge to the environment, called end-of -pipe treatment. 

Reduce or eliminate production of the effluent at the source by waste minimization. 

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The whole problem is best dealt with by not making the waste in the first place, i.e., waste minimization. If waste can be minimized at the source, this brings the dual benefit of reducing waste treatment costs and reducing raw materials costs. 

Although this is generally the sequence in which the five actions would be considered, this sequence will not always be correct. The best sequence in which to consider the five actions will depend on the process. The magnitude of effect each action will have on waste minimization will vary for different processes. 

Process operation for waste minimization. Many of the problems associated with waste from process operations can be mitigated if the... 

To the process designer, life-cycle analysis is useful because focusing exclusively on waste minimization at some point in the life cycle sometimes creates problems elsewhere in the cycle. The designer can often obtain useful insights by changing the boundaries of the system under consideration so that they are wider than those of the process being designed. 

Process waste minimization in general terms is a question of... 

The utility system also creates waste through products of combustion from boilers and furnaces and wastewater from water treatment, boiler blowdown, etc. Utility waste minimization is in general terms a question of ... 

Once waste minimization has been taken to an economic level, treatment of the resulting emissions must be considered. 

It must be clear that the best method for dealing with effluent problems is to solve the problem at source, i.e., waste minimization. 

DILLON Materials Selection for the Chemical Process Industries freeman Hazardous Waste Minimization... 

Chemical processes will in the future need to be designed as part of a sustainable industrial development which retains the capacity of ecosystems to support industrial activity and life. This book therefore places a high emphasis on waste minimization and energy efficiency in the context of good economic performance and good health and safety practices. 

With these waste-minimization techniques, methanol synthesis is relatively clean, and poses no unique environmental hazards. The need for environmental controls is more closely associated with the synthesis gas generation process. 

Reduced Emissions and Waste Minimization. Reducing harmful emissions and minimizing wastes within a process by inclusion of additional reaction and separation steps and catalyst modification may be substantially better than end-of-pipe cleanup or even simply improving maintenance, housekeeping, and process control practices. SO2 and NO reduction to their elemental products in fluid catalytic cracking units exemplifies the use of such a strategy (11). 

Given the first type of simulation, it is advantageous to be able to design a system of RO modules that can achieve the process objective at a minimal cost. A model has been iategrated iato a process simulation program to predict the stream matrix for a reverse osmosis process (132). In the area of waste minimization, the proper placement of RO modules is essential for achieving minimum waste at a minimum cost. Excellent details on how to create an optimal network of RO modules is available (96). 

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