Overview
A spent solvent today has two destinations, and both of them end the solvent's life on someone else's site. It is burned for its fuel value, which destroys it, or it is trucked out under hazardous-waste rules to a distillation recycler that boils the mixture using externally supplied heat. ARBOK-Solvents puts the recovery where the solvent already is: under deep vacuum at ambient temperature, each component leaves the mixture at its own boiling point without a heat source, and the plant gets its solvent back instead of paying twice — once to dispose of it, once to buy it again.
Applications
Mixed and contaminated spent solvents from painting and coating lines, printing operations, degreasing and parts-cleaning baths, electronics cleaning steps, pharmaceutical and chemical synthesis. Output: recovered solvent fractions at process grade, returned on site, plus a small non-volatile concentrate of paint solids, oils and resins as a separate stream.
Operating Principle
Dropping system pressure brings each component of the mixture to its own boiling point at ambient temperature, in sequence. The mixture separates into its constituent fractions inside a single unit, without an external heat source and without a classical distillation column. Non-volatile contaminants stay behind as a compact residue.
Key Parameters
| Parameter | Value |
|—|—|
| Process temperature | ambient — no heat supplied, no heating circuit, no setpoint |
| Separation driver | pressure, not heat |
| Reagents | none |
| Output | process-grade solvent fractions, returned on site |
| Residue | compact non-volatile concentrate |
Advantages
The solvent stays on site and stays a solvent. No hazardous-waste transport, no off-site recycler, no incineration of a purchased material. One unit replaces both the disposal contract and part of the purchasing budget.
Market Potential
US industrial solvent use is on the order of 30 mln tons a year, a substantial share of it recoverable rather than single-use. The global solvent recovery and recycling market runs $1.2–6 bln depending on scope, growing at a mid-single-digit rate. Every site running degreasing, coating, printing or solvent-based cleaning at volume is a candidate.
Related Technologies
ARBOK-VC (Vacuum Cracking) · ARBOK-Paint · ARBOK VOC RECOVERY