Hazardous waste management within basic chemistry laboratory at KMUTNB

Abstract

Experiment in the chemistry laboratory is one of the sources of hazardous waste, however the management of such waste has received little attention from the concerned stakeholders. The purpose of this research was to analyze the current situation of hazardous waste generated in basic chemistry laboratory from Department of Industrial Chemistry, Faculty of Applied Science at the King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok (KMUTNB). A series of the experiments were conducted to observe the generations of the hazardous waste in the laboratory for two semesters in the academic year 2019. The study identified solid and liquid two types of hazardous waste generated from the laboratory. The solid state hazardous waste included fine powder of barium sulfate (BaSO4), broken laboratory glasswares (BG), litmus papers (LP), universal papers (UP), filter papers (FP), chemical labels (CL) and rubber gloves (RG) whereas mixed heavy metals, mixed bases and mixed acids were included in the hazardous waste in the liquid state. Broken laboratory glassware was found to be the largest component among the solid wastes generated in the basic chemistry laboratory at KMUTNB during the experiment period. Similarly, the mixed heavy metals was found to be the major contributor for the liquid hazardous waste with 22.5 liters in total in the specified period. The study implicated that the amount the solid and liquid hazardous waste can be reduced with the efficient management practice by collecting, treating and disposing of the hazardous waste carefully.