Atmospheric distillation is the simplest technology available to recover spent solvents.
MEK is a hazardous chemical listed in the Toxics Release Inventory. The objective of this project was to analyze the distillation unit and characterize spent samples of MEK, to demonstrate product quality to show that the recycled solvent was of sufficient quality to reuse, generate waste reduction data, and perform an economic evaluation. Results indicated that through recycling, large volumes of spent solvent waste were reduced to small volumes of distillation residue at this facility.