Recycling of acetone by distillation

The Resource Conservation Recovery Act (RCRA) identifies spent acetone solvent as a listed hazardous waste. At Fernald, acetone has been spent that has been contaminated with radionuclides and therefore is identified as a mixed hazardous waste. At the time of this publication there is no available approved method of recycling or disposal of radioactively contaminated spent acetone solvent. The Consent Decree with the Ohio EPA and the Consent Agreement with the United States EPA was agreed upon for the long-term compliant storage of hazardous waste materials. The purpose of this project was to demonstrate the feasibility for safely decontaminating spent acetone to background levels of radioactivity for reuse. It was postulated that through heat distillation, radionuclides could be isolated from the spent acetone.