A Study To Reduce Chemical Waste Generated in Chemistry Teaching Laboratories

Abstract

Chemical waste should be reduced to minimize environmental pollution, and it is important that the amount of waste is minimized in chemistry teaching laboratories to reduce the negative impact on environment as well as the disposal costs of university. There are several ways to minimize the waste generated in chemistry teaching laboratories, namely, (1) elimination or reduction of the source of pollution, (2) recycling and reusing the chemicals, (3) treatment of waste to minimize its hazards, (4) the use of microscale chemistry, and (5) better management of chemical inventories in the laboratories. In this study, the common course syllabi and laboratory techniques of chemistry undergraduate experiments in universities are evaluated. The masses and volumes of chemical reagents used in the chemistry teaching laboratories of National University of Singapore (NUS) are quantified. Chemical waste reduction practices of the universities are examined, and a checklist is used to evaluate the current waste reduction practices in the chemistry teaching laboratories of NUS. Although there are existing practices that reduce the amount of chemicals used and waste generated in teaching laboratories, more effort could be done to improve the situation further.

Coupling coordination between higher education and environmental governance: Evidence of western China

“…Besides, environmental governance sometimes requires volunteering participation of college students, which means that students are more likely to spend less time in the study within the limited time, their competitiveness will decrease, and the performance of the local higher education sector will decline [41][42][43]. In addition, stricter environmental governance requires laboratories in universities to renew more environment-friendly equipment, which is a fiscal burden for some laboratories that are not well funded, and thus hinders the research outputs of the laboratories and reduces the development level of the higher education in the short term [8,44,45].…”

“…The high-quality academic or research outputs provide theoretical foundations or guidelines to enhance the environmental governance status and offer resources, benefits, policies, and countermeasures to decrease environmental governance pressure. On the contrary, the research output of higher education (such as the byproducts of chemical experiments like wastewater and residue) directly pollutes the environment, decreases the environment quality, and increases the burden of environmental governance response; some controversial or even unethical academic output is likely to decrease the state of the environment and hinder the quality of environmental governance responsive actions [3,5,6,45,53].…”

Transesterification of Isoamyl Acetate─An Experiment in Green Organic Chemistry

“…Products which are refined by students are often treated as waste. With the increasing awareness of energy conservation and environmental protection, many educators are applying the concept of green chemistry when teaching experimental classes by revising the design of experiments to reduce environmental pollution. − In the teaching experiment for the preparation of isoamyl acetate offered by the Chemical Experiment Center of Dalian University of Technology, at least 2 L of isoamyl acetate is disposed as waste every year. , Similarly, the methanol recovered in the liquid chromatography experiment is treated as waste liquid; the cost for disposal of these reagents is high. This paper reports a green chemistry experiment using recycled isoamyl acetate and methanol to generate isoamyl alcohol through a transesterification reaction catalyzed by KOH. − The isoamyl alcohol can be reused as the reaction raw material in the teaching experiment for the preparation of isoamyl acetate.…”

Glowing-in-the-Screen: Teaching Fluorescence with a Homemade Accessible Setup

“…Another report describes a homemade “fluorescence microscope” built up with a light-emitting diode (LED) and optical filters . However, these approaches still have the inconvenience of using uncommon or unaffordable materials that do require special waste management − which especially is a concern for home lab experiences. Furthermore, the huge advance in smartphone technology has made the acquisition of high-quality scientific images accessible, together with the availability to analyze and manipulate them through free applications.…”