PITTSBURGH, PA – Broudy Printing Inc., an environmentally friendly printing and graphic communications company serving the Pittsburgh area, has taken another step towards protecting the environment. Broudy has added a Solvent Recycling system to recycled all of the solvents used in the Printing process. Broudy implemented the Resolv-r 2® Solvent Recycler 90DIGIT from NexGen Enviro Systems.
Since prehistoric times, the process of distillation has been used to produce alcohol for human consumption. This same process is now being used for many other purposes, including the recycling of solvents used in industrial or small business environments.
Distillation is the simple process of heating a mixture of ingredients until a solvent material evaporates-then cooling and condensing that vapor into a pure liquid. Alcohol has been produced this way since time immemorial, and today the process is being used by large and small organizations to recycle materials from manufacturing, painting and cleaning operations.
The ability to recycle solvents on a small scale has emerged in the past 30 years with the development of ‘batch’ stills. Auto-body shops began using these small recyclers in the mid 1980s, and now they’re catching on with more and more organizations that wish to control their own destiny and re-use their waste solvents thus saving on disposal cost.
These recyclers save money in two ways: by recycling used solvents so they can be used again and by eliminating most (and some times all) of the expense of disposing the hazardous waste. Although even the smallest recyclers cost several thousand dollars, they can easily pay for themselves in a year or two if the company generates any volume of solvent waste. It also must be said that recyclers are good for the environment.
The chemistry recycling system takes used press solvent and recovers it by a distillation process. The chemistry is cleaned and the solvent and water are separated to be recycled. This dramatically reduces the consumption of virgin solvent and almost eliminates the need for hazardous waste removal.
