It may not have been front page news in the U.S., but for one Michigan Tech professor, a Hungarian environmental disaster last fall had some important scientific implications.
In October 2010, a containment dam belonging to an alumina manufacturer in Hungary
collapsed, releasing 200 million gallons of caustic sludge and killing several people in nearby towns. It's standard practice to neutralize such waste with acetic acid, making it less harmful. But then, all you get is neutralized sludge, and a big cleanup.
Gerard Caneba is a chemical engineering professor at
Michigan Technological University, and for him, the cleanup sparked a better idea.
He's been working on developing vinyl acetate polymers in his lab, and one of the properties of the polymers, when mixed with alkaline substances like that caustic sludge, is to produce both acetic acid and another product, polyvinyl alcohol. That can be a valuable product in landscaping, insulation and construction, all produced while kicking out the acetic acid needed to neutralize the waste in the first place.
"We did tests and got really nice performance values on simulated alumina tailings," Caneba says. "We're not just cleaning the stuff up with acetic acid. We can neutralize toxic waste and turn it into something benign and useful."
To that end, he's been working with the Hungarian Academy of Sciences to test the solution; the country has about 20 alumina manufacturers who could benefit from it.
And it's not even the only environment-saving application for Caneba's work. The vinyl acetate polymers also may have uses in cleaning up oil spills and dispersing spilled oil; he's also working with Gulf Coast researchers to investigate those polymers, called surfactants.
Writer: Sam Eggleston
Source: Gerard Caneba, Michigan Technological University
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