Industrial Ecology and the Geoenvironment - Sustainable Practices in Geoenvironmental Engineering - page 134

TABLE 4.2
Typical Composition of Discards, Spills, and Waste Streams from Some Representative Industrial
Activities and Indust ries

Industry Discards, Spills, and Waste Streams

Metal manufacturing
and inishing

Acids, bases, cyanide, reactive wastes, heavy metals, ignitable wastes, solvents, spent
platings, oil and grease, emulsifying agents, particulates, polishing sludges, scrubber
residues, complexing agents, wastewater treatment sludges

Agroindustries (food
and nonfood)

Acids, bases, sulides, chromium, hides, skins, suspended solids, pesticides, solvents,
chlorine compounds, waste (iber) sludge, dyes, pigments, kaolin clay sludge

Petrochemical and
chemical industries

Acids, bases, ignitable wastes, heavy metals, inorganics, pesticides, reactive wastes,
solvents, lubricants, spent catalysts, spent caustic, and sweetening agents, organic
waste sludges

Hospitals-medical
facilities

Biomedical wastes, infectious wastes, acids, bases, radioactive materials, solvents,
heavy metals, ignitable wastes

emissions, and disposal of liquid waste and solid waste materials from the downstream
service industries. For the processing and manufacturing industries, the discharges come
during the processing and manufacturing stages. These include (a) inadvertent losses of
raw and intermediate products and materials utilized during processing and manufactur-
ing and (b) liquid and solid waste products associated with processing and manufacturing
procedures and technology. Acids, bases, heavy metals, inorganics, organic chemicals, and
solvents are common to the industries shown in Table 4.2. Many of the inorganics are com-
posed of chemical compounds that do not contain carbon as the principal element. Most of
the inorganic compounds are stable and soluble in water. They tend to have rapid chemical
reactions and large numbers of elements. They are generally less complex than the organic
chemical compounds. Other more specialized wastes include pesticides, herbicides, and
the like, solvents, cyanides, reactive wastes.
Other than general wastewater, liquid waste streams emanating directly from down-
stream industries can be grouped in four categories: (1) aqueous-inorganic, including
brines, electroplating wastes, metal etching, and caustic rinse solutions; (2) aqueous-
organic, including wood preservatives, water-based dyes, rinse water from pesticide and
herbicide containers, organic chemical production, etc.; (3) organic, including oil-based paint
wastes, production of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, spent motor oil, cleaning agents,
reining, and reprocessing wastes, etc.; and (4) high-solid-content and high-molecular-
weight hydrocarbon sludges.
In respect to managed liquid and solid wastes in landills, there are two types of liquid
plumes or streams that emanate from the wastepile in the landill. The irst type, which is
identiied as primary leachate , consists of the liquid waste originally submitted to the land-
ill combined with dissolved constituents in the wastepile. The primary leachate may be
aqueous-organic, aqueous-inorganic, or organic. Leachate generated from water entering
into the wastepile is deined as secondary leachate and is generally composed of the perco-
lating water and solutes from dissolution products in the wastepile. This leachate may be
aqueous-organic or aqueous-inorganic or a combination of inorganic and inorganic solutes
and compounds in the liquid phase. Since it is not really possible to distinguish between
the two kinds of leachates when they exit from the bottom and/or sides of a landill, the
general term leachate is used, with no attempt at categorization. The predominant liquid
in a leachate may be water, an organic liquid, or a combination. The solutes and inorganic
and organic chemicals in the leachate are the products of the dissolution of the materials in