Oil sample bottles - wash for reuse or discard? 3

I would think that you must have to comply with some local regulation and wash them before you discard them. In my area, I am not allowed to throw used oil or chemical containing bottles anywhere I want. They must be disposed of in a "proper manner" which BTW costs more than recycling them, making recycling a natural option. I would also urge any company to follow environmentally responsible policies, even if it is not actually written into the local law, just as well as I believe that it is every engineer's (if not everyone's) responsibility to not only actively formulate responsible policy for personal use, but to ensure that their company is behaving in an environmentally and socially responsible manner as well. As such, you should endevor to not only wash the bottles, but recycle them as well.

I'll second BigInch on his perspective. I've generally seen sample bottles washed and re-used. Reusing beats recycling, but recycling beats just throwing them in some hole in the ground...

dkf, Sorry if I implied that you wern't being responsible, I see that you obviously are on the right track, although it seems like some in your company are having second thoughts. Also sorry I don't know what to tell you about the best way to wash them. A commercial type dishwasher would be my first choice, but that could depend on number of bottles you need to wash. Surely you can find a continuous chain bottle washer. Not my field, but I'm sure they must exist somewhere.

We wash and reuse our glass sample bottles. We have a machine specially designed for this purpose. I would recommend a machine rather than hand washing in order to get more consistent results. Beyond that, the above answers are right on. Let's be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Johnny Pellin

BigInch, our main concern in washing the bottles is not cost reduction, once local direct labor is very cheap. What we want is to protect washing employee from benzene exposure, that can be higher than desirable, for certain runs. We actually do have some washing machines, locally developped, basic concepts. The problem is that Im not happy with these machines, we still have some benzene exposure and had a couple of accidents ( the accidents with steam were severely damaging to operators and absolutely unacceptable). In addition I am unhappy with washing process. Using steam you become a lot of contaminated water to treat. Using detergents you become untreatable efluents by local water separators.
I think there must be an optimized process, something as starting with a kind of a compatible solvent washing phase followed by a rinse phase of a very thin remaining layer.
JJPellin could you please describe a little bit the process phases and steps of your system?
Our machines are static, you place a dozen bottles upside down over nests with spraying nozzles and run a quantity of detergent liquid or steam through. After this cycle you remove bottles for drying.
Could anyone comment other alternatives in use?
Regards
DKF

Its great that you are concerned with health & safety as well. Your first post only mentioned the cost factors as of concern by others. I'm sure you can understand how I arrived at a (premature) conclusion.

Perhaps the cheap labor could do with some training and a raise. Treatment of materials containing toxic residues from handling of benzene should not be left up to "bottle washers". You might have also hit on the "real problem" as well. Is it possible that the real hazard around there is the steam? Is it actually more dangerous to your employees than the benzene exposure itself? For what may be relatively small residues of benzene left in the bottles after initial recovery, it might not be as large of a problem as you think and even be compatible for disposal into your existing wastewater treatment system. You might want to discuss that with your environmental compliance section. Just a suggestion.

The Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Reegistry offers some exposure guidelines and disposal recommendations here,

I am sorry I did not reply sooner. I tried to find some information on our bottle washing machine. I could not find anything detailed. Sorry, I don't have time to research further. I am told it is a fully automated machine designed just for that purpose. That is all I know.

Johnny Pellin

We reuse essentially 100% of our sample bottles. We have 2 laboratory washers, one is an older type where the bottles rotate and spray heads are stationary, for steam and high temperature, with the other having rotating spary heads.

An entirely different approach.
In addition I instituted the use of one of our pyrolysis cleaning furnaces to clean the samples of the tarry materials and high boilers. I also clean very expensive laboratory glassware from the bench scale and pilot plants.

Though I haven't used the Pyro-Clean system it is very similar to the large units that I used.

Unclesyd, thank you for contributing this new idea I was not aware of.
I am asking "pyroclean" if they process commercial glass bottles in addition to pyrex lab glassware, and a first idea of investment cost for basic machine. Their operation cost of around 1 US$ per washed bottle can be a limiting factor.
Maybe there are some other "waterless washing processes" to be brought up by the next contributor.
In our lab control process we are collecting samples in 1 liter bottle sizes. Our lab personnel claim that they have to follow API recommendations and cannot decrease size of sample, as was proposed, to decrease product qty returning to slope tank and nunber of bottles to wash.
Any comments on this aspect?
Thank you all once more for kind help
DKF

I see no problems as I've cleaned just about everything in our Pyrolysis Furnaces. Though the most of our labware is Pyrex we also have a lot of flint glass.

The max temperature anything will see is around 900F we have dropped this to around 800F to clean some cast Al components.

The process.
To get a little better idea of how this process work take a look around the Pollution Control Products site. These are the types we have. Our medium size oven has a nameplate BTU capacity of 900,000. There is very little electric power for the burners only as there are no fans. You might find some other things you can clean.

I went back to some very old notes and found the process inventors name and came up with this paper.