Correlation study of hazardous waste characteristics among various chemical processes in Republic of Korea

To harmonize with international standards, the Republic of Korea is in the process of converting its current hazardous waste classification system and setting up regulatory standards for all toxic substances present in hazardous waste. Detailed characterization of each form of hazardous waste belonging to five chemical processes and their correlations were studied. In the present work, the concentrations of 13 heavy metals, F⁻, CN⁻, 7 PAH compounds, total PCDD/F and 7 PCB isomers present in the hazardous waste generated among chemical processes such as synthetic rubber (SR), man-made fibers (MF), organic dyes and pigments (DP), pharmaceuticals and cosmetics were analyzed along with their leaching characteristics. Comparing all the processes, most of the heavy metal concentrations were high in SR waste. Naphthalene was the dominant PAH in most of the chemical process waste. PCDD/F concentrations of the samples were in the range of 0.001–0.003 ng I-TEQ/g. PCB isomer-101 and isomer-118 were found to be slightly higher than the permissible limit in the SR filter cake sample. SR process wastes doesn’t show any resemblance with the other process waste in either the heavy metals and PAH trend. Each sample from DP and MF were suitable only for hazardous waste landfill.