industrial waste disposal alternatives in the process of aromatic compounds productionin petrochemical industry (case study: nouri petrochemical complex, asaluyeh, iran)

Application of aromatic compounds hasdramaticallyincreased as raw materials in various industriesanddifferentfactories have been established to produce aromatic compounds.the currentresearch aims atcharacterizingindustrial wastegeneration in aromatics production process in petrochemicalindustriesand determiningthe best feasible alternative for waste disposal.for this purpose,the world’s biggest aromatic producer,i.e. nouri petrochemical complex (npc),located in asaluyeh, iran,has been selected ascase study.firstly,different wastestreams,generated during aromatics production,have been determinedthrougha specific checklist.spent industrial soil, spentcatalyst, spentmolecularsieve,and spentnormal-formyl-morpholine (nfm) solvent arethe most important identified wastesin npc, withthe former beingthe most generated waste in npc witharate of 600 tonsper year. afterwards, thementionedwaste has been sampledand important physicochemical specificationsuch asheavy metals and organic compounds has been measured.ni, cu,and asare remarkable trace heavy metals,observed in all kinds of generated waste.in the nextstep, industrial waste classification and coding has been done,based on different guidelines. finally different feasible alternatives likematerial recovery, sanitary landfill,and incineration have been compared,based on conventionaleconomic, technical,and environmental indices. the bestfeasible wastedisposalmethodsare the extraction of heavy metals from spent catalysts, recycling of spent molecular sieves andspent industrial soil as additivesto building materials,and recovery of thermal energy by incineration of spent nfm solvent.