Long term solutions for industrial wastes

long term solutions for industrial wastes a proposed approach

Paulo von Krüger
Professor of the Metallurgy and Materials Department – Escola de Minas/UFOP – Ouro Preto – Brazil,

ABSTRACT

Waste generation is an unavoidable consequence from any industrial process.
Among the shortcomings from that, environment impairing and underutilization of non- renewable natural resources can be emphasized.
Generally speaking it can be said that the adopted solutions aims only the attending of regulatory constraints from official agencies. Normally, when these solutions result in economic benefits, it is not more than a coincidence. This comes from the misconception that wastes are unrecoverable losses and those who generate it are villains that must be permanently watched.
In this paper another point of view is proposed.
In it, wastes are considered as raw materials/products and generators as businessmen looking for marketing it in sound commercial basis. Besides that, from this same point of view, when there are no available technologies in the state of the art, waste generators would be responsible on storage it in a way that turned easier its recovery in the future. With this approach, the concept of “effluent plant” and “effluent mine” is presented
For illustrating purposes, a case study is presented, for a selected hazardous waste.
As will be seen, the approach is the same as those for conventional enterprises/raw materials.

Resúmen

La generación de residuos es el proceso inevitable de cualquier proceso industrial.
En las consecuencias resultantes, se destacan la agresión al medio ambiente y el bajo provecho de los recursos naturales non renovables.
Las soluciones adoptadas normalmente contemplan casi exclusivamente el atender a las reglas ambientales impuestas por el gobierno. Los ejemplos de alternativas de reciclaje que generan beneficios económicos son apenas felices coincidencias. Esto es el resultado natural de una