Pollution Prevention Wipe Application Study

As part of a pollution prevention program, a study was conducted at Sandia National Laboratories and at the Amarillo, ''Pantex Plant'' to identify a suitable replacement solvent(s) for cleaning hardware during routine maintenance operations. Current cleaning is performed using solvents (e.g. acetone, toluene, MEK, alcohols) that are classified as Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCW) materials. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has assigned four characteristics as the criteria for determining whether a material is identified as hazardous under RCRA: Ignitability, Corrosivity, Reactivity and Toxicity. Within the DOE and DoD sector, these solvents are used with hand wipes to clean surfaces prior to O-ring replacement, to remove decals for new labeling, to clean painted surfaces prior to reconditioning, and for other general maintenance purposes. In some cases, low level radioactive contamination during cleaning necessitates that the RCIL4 solvent-containing wipes be classified as mixed waste. To avoid using RCRA materials, cleaning candidates were sought that had a flashpoint greater than 140 F, a pH between 2.5 and 12.5, and did not fail the reactivity and toxicity criteria. Three brominated cleaners, two hydrofluoroether azeotropes and two aliphatic hydrocarbon cleaner formulations were studied as potential replacements. Cleaning efficacy, materials compatibility, corrosion and accelerated aging studies were conducted and used to screen potential candidates. Hypersolve NPB (an n-propyl bromide based formulation) consistently ranked high in removing typical contaminants for weapons applications