Ahmet TURGUT
Manager
Eralp Kimyasal Madd. San. Tic. Ltd. Şti.
Waste is classified as being hazardous when it displays some of the following properties; explosive,
oxidizing, flammable, irritant, harmful, toxic, carcinogenic. The relevant property is determined by
testing.
Hazardous waste must be handled and disposed in a manner that ensures these materials do not
pose a hazardous threat to others or end up in municipal sewers or landfills.
Improper treatment of hazardous waste can also cause serious long-term environmental
effects such as contaminated soil, contaminated ground water.
Waste management is an integrated process starting from hindrance to discharging.
Hindrance takes the first recommendation in waste management hierarchy. Effective waste
repression needs knowledge about the root causes and sources. Chemical processes, material
inputs, market needs should deeply be analyzed so that waste should not be produced. Avoidance
of generation waste is the purest form of precaution. If waste generation cannot be avoided, then
we should consider re-use and re-cycling of waste.
A waste may be raw input for a different process, or some chemical changes may be added
add value to waste. One of the biggest innovations coming to waste management is the
ability to turn waste into actual power. Instead of sitting in a landfill, certain types of
waste can simply be converted into energy.
A real and effective collection is a must for environmental protection. Discharging and
burning of waste in many small-scale companies should be prevented. An innovative
approach to install sensors on the bins to inform the waste management companies the
type and amount of waste. Collection and recycling of waste will be better if all bins
are sensorized.
Innovative chemical waste treatment technologies are summarized under three types of
processes; thermal, physical – chemical and biological.
Thermal conversion is a new technology that can be used wastes into specialty products.
This process inspired from natural geothermal processes that use heat and pressure to turn
useless materials into useful products. It could be used to turn waste into chemicals,
fertilizers and fuel. High temperature thermal treatment commonly involves thermal
combustion (oxidation), which reduces waste to ash and facilitates energy recovery as
electricity and heat. Some advanced conversion technologies commonly use gasification
(limited O 2 ) and pyrolysis (no O 2 ) to convert waste into intermediate products; fuels and
chemicals, like ammonia and methanol.
Bioreclamation and bioremediation are terms that describe the processes using microorganism
to biodegrade contaminants. In bio-reclamation microorganisms catalyze the
transformation of contaminants to carbon dioxide and water. Temperature, pH, aeration,
moisture and the number and activity of microorganisms present and concentration and
type of contaminant can be optimized to increase the rate and extend of transformation.
Bio-reclamation may be applied on site permanently, faster and with lower costs.
Bioremediation processes are used for purification of soil. Poly-nuclear aromatic hydrocarbon
contaminated and chlorinated aromatic and aliphatic contaminated soils are purified
by anaerobic microorganisms. They can effectively remove the chlorine from the aromatic
ring. There are too many studies on bio-cleaning in the last two decades, promising
better for the future.
