Análise e avaliação econômica preliminar das possíveis rotas de recuperação de um solvente industrial

Abstract

Among the numerous processes that occur during the manufacturing of flexible plastic packaging, printing is the stage that utilizes the highest amount of chemicals. After each print, the printer components need to be cleaned with an organic solvent to remove all residual ink and prepare the machine for the next production. The cleaning procedure generates waste classified as hazardous class I according to the ABNT NBR 10004/2004 standard. Considering the environmental and economic impact of this process, this study was developed with the objective of exploring potential routes for recovering waste from the cleaning of printing machines in a packaging industry. The aim was to evaluate the efficiency of each process to compare the investment value of these projects with their potential financial returns. To assess the efficiency of the recovery processes, samples of the treated waste were analyzed using High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) to determine the acetate concentration in each sample. Among the evaluated methods, distillation and decantation followed by filtration achieved efficiencies of approximately 58% and 47%, respectively. Based on these results and the data collected during cost assessment, the financial return that the implementation of each of these processes could bring to the company under study was simulated. Subsequently, a preliminary economic evaluation was conducted, estimating the project costs of both processes, and based on these values, the economic viability of each route was evaluated. To do this, the Net Present Value (NPV) for a one-year period was calculated, and the results indicated that decantation followed by filtration is economically viable, whereas distillation is not. However, it is worthwhile to further investigate the technical feasibility of both proposed recovery routes to verify if the implementation of the distillation route would be advantageous in the long term, considering that this process has a recovery efficiency of almost 60% and the potential to obtain highly valuable products.