Green Chemistry: Recycle Your Solvents

Everyone is making an effort to be environmentally friendly. We recycle our glass, cans, and newspapers, we take our travel mugs to the coffee shop, and take cloth bags to the grocery store… why not recycle solvents? Wait, recycle solvents?

Instead of using traditional solvents, which are costly and really cannot be recycled, use supercritical carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is one of the most commonly used supercritical fluids. CO₂ is:

• Safe
• Inexpensive
• Readily available
• An ideal substitute for many hazardous and toxic solvents

By controlling or regulating pressure and temperature, the density, or solvent strength, of supercritical fluids can be altered to simulate organic solvents ranging from chloroform to methylene chloride to hexane. This dissolving power can be applied to purify, extract, fractionate, infuse, and recrystallize a wide array of materials.

CO₂ is not produced in the SCF process. Existing CO₂ is used. There is NO addition to the greenhouse effect.

For more information about how you can use green chemistry for your process, visit the Applied Separations website.
http://appliedseparations.com/Supercritical/