Scoping and Quantification of Solvent Recovery

There are several standard ways to quantify the benefit and success of a solvent recovery process. If approaching the situation from the perspective that equipment has been preselected and therefore does not need to be designed, the following elements should be evaluated:

• Recovery rate. The amount of solvent recovered as a percentage of the input amount of that specific solvent.
• Environmental benefit. The carbon footprint benefits from replacing virgin solvent with recycled solvent, and from mitigating incineration of solvent. The process mass intensity (PMI) can also be assessed. There are existing tools available to allow individuals to quantify the environmental impact of a solvent recovery process, such as the  LCA based tool developed by ETH Zurich
• Purity achieved.
• Output flux or flow rate of the recovered solvent i.e. is the flow rate of the solvent output reasonable and does it meet manufacture requirements.
• Energy requirement of the process i.e. the utilities required to operate the solvent recovery facility, and the environmental impact of this.