PTQ Q2 2024 Issue

(ACGIH), Department of Transportation (DOT), National Institute for Occupational Safety and. Health (NIOSH), The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) – and is listed on the Special Health Hazard Substance List. Until the 1960s, most hazardous waste was dumped in waterways, which caused pollution perilous to ecologies and drinking water. Oil companies rectified the problem by developing deep well injection sites to safely dispose of liq- uids deep underground beneath aquifers to trap the liquid waste under multiple impermeable layers of rock. The severity of the effects of mismanaging spent caustics is well documented. In 2006, an oil trading company produced spent caus- tic aboard a cargo ship that refined coker naphtha to mix with gasoline to sell as fuel in the West African market. It generated more than 500 cubic metres of toxic waste in the ship’s waste tanks. After being turned away by several countries, the company had the waste illegally dumped in Côte d’Ivoire. Shortly afterwards, tens of thousands of Ivorians suffered extreme health issues, and authorities recorded 15 deaths – all of which caught the attention of The goal of on-site treatment is to neutralise the caustic, remove impurities, and reduce both the chemical oxygen demand and biochemical oxygen demand Amnesty International and Greenpeace. In 2007, a spent caustic tank exploded in a major Midwestern US refinery. The explosion occurred while the operators were transferring spent caustic into the atmos- pheric-relief cone roof storage tank that had been in service since 1956. There were no injuries or fatalities, but property damage was extensive enough to interrupt the spent caus - tic disposal process. Unit operation was eventually restored by commissioning an alternative, inherently safe, spent caustic storage system. Public policy solution The OSHA, a department of the US Department of Labor, requires chemical manufacturers, distributors, or importers to provide applicable Safety Data Sheets to communicate information and risks on hazardous materials. In 1974, US refineries and petrochemical complexes were mandated to treat spent caustic to prevent adverse environmental impacts and meet environmental regulations. The European Union (EU) developed a chemicals pol- icy in the late 1960s that was regulated at the organisa- tional level rather than within its 27 individual countries. The policy was overhauled in 2007 with the launch of the Registration, Evaluation, and Authorization of Chemicals (REACH), which united chemicals regulation in Europe into a single system.

Canadian provincial governments play a role in the coun- try’s environmental regulation, with the province of Ontario leading in toxics reduction legislation. Its Toxics Reduction Strategy helps protect the health and environment by reducing toxic substances in air, land, water, and consumer products. In 2009, the Ontario Legislature passed the Toxics Reduction Act, the cornerstone of the Toxics Reduction Strategy, which requires regulated facilities to track and quantify toxic substances they produce and develop plans to reduce their use and creation. Although slower to adopt safety regulations compared to the US, EU, and Canada, several other nations, including Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand, and Singapore, are instituting programmes and processes that ensure proper compliance with safety and environmental policies. There is also an extensive history of international col - laboration on chemicals assessment and management, resulting in binding conventions, such as the Stockholm Convention, mandatory classification and labelling stand - ards, and global chemicals institutions. Most notable is the Inter-Organization Programme for the Sound Management of Chemicals (IOMC), an international co-ordinating group that promotes sound chemical management worldwide fol- lowing the recommendations of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). IMO 2020 was established in 2020 with regulations that cap the sulphur content in marine fuels. It bans the use of fuels with a sulphur content greater than 0.5% globally to reduce sulphur emissions that are heavily produced by standard variations of marine fuel. Refiners worldwide were then required to produce higher volumes of IMO-compliant low-sulphur fuel oil, including more valuable products like marine gasoil and diesel. A ripple effect of IMO 2020 was increased pressure on the handling and disposal of spent caustics. The cost of reclamation had begun to exceed the original cost of materials, so most reclamation facilities were reconfig - ured into disposal facilities. In the US, deep well injection, which accounted for the disposal of more than 85% of toxic wastes from refineries, was grandfathered into environ - mental protection clauses. Deep well disposal was consid- ered reasonably inexpensive and made disposal easy, but environmentalists soon criticised the practice. To avoid deep well injection, the toxic properties of spent caustic must be removed sufficiently that it can be treated in existing, above-ground, wastewater treatment facilities. These facilities use biological oxidation to produce a treated water effluent that is acceptable for discharge into water - ways. Pretreating the spent caustic streams to remove their most toxic components can sometimes require expensive treatment technologies. The difficulty and cost depend on the nature of the impurities. Spent caustic treatment: Technical solutions Spent caustic treatment technologies are deployed on-site, eliminating the need to transport the spent caustic off-site as waste to a treatment, disposal, or recycling facility. The goal of on-site treatment is to neutralise the caustic, remove impurities, and reduce both the chemical oxygen

PTQ Q2 2024