Los Alamos recycling of major electrical devices spares the environment

A Los Alamos National Laboratory project is pushing the limits of recycling, especially with hard-to-scrap items.

A project recently rounded up more than 100 legacy electrical devices no longer in use — all of which contained oil and some that contained the now-banned chemical compound known as polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. Legacy electrical devices are equipment such as capacitors, transformers, circuit breakers, regulators, oils, and wire and cable. These legacy items are generated when industry updates to new technology, environmental regulations change or the distribution system is modernized.

The lab was determined to recycle them rather than bury the items — totaling 39,000 pounds — in a landfill, where they could contaminate the environment.

According to lab officials, any sector of private industry that continues to modernize its technology will have outdated legacy equipment. Recycling that equipment provides many benefits over the alternatives.

“Our direction to the recycling companies considered for this project was that oil and electrical equipment must be recycled to the greatest extent possible, and they must provide a certificate of recycling back to the lab,” said Tony Garcia of the laboratory’s Waste Management Division.

Lab officials emphasized that though this type of recycling isn’t new for industry, they’re aiming to demonstrate what businesses can do to tackle the recycling challenge. The project is a way for the lab to address some of its larger legacy items that have proved challenging in the past.

Retired electrical equipment may contain a variety of materials that require proper management prior to recycling, such as dielectric fluids that contain or are contaminated with PCBs or other regulated materials. Because of that, proper recycling practices must be followed to ensure compliance with environmental regulations.

Recycling reduces the potential for future liability because the items contain toxic materials that are harmful to the environment. Valuable ferrous metals, nonferrous metals and oils that do not contain PCBs, can be reused or recycled.

“What we are doing now is a sustainable, efficient, compliant, and a safe way to work with a commercial business that knows how to disposition these items,” lab spokesman Steven Horak said in an email.

The only proprietary knowledge used in such processes is associated with the treatment of oils with PCB levels greater than 500 parts per million to reduce PCBs to levels acceptable for oil recycling, according to lab officials.

“The lab is working with a company that has demonstrated this capability. By working with a licensed used electrical equipment recycling vendor, the lab is provided with the assurance of complete cradle-to-grave service, from collection and transportation to ultimate recycling/incineration of hazardous waste materials recovered from retired PCB and non-PCB electrical equipment,” Horak said.

To start the project in 2021, the lab began to gather inventories on any unusable electrical devices of a certain size or larger.

Workers drained the oil from large electrical devices, some of which measure up to 10 feet tall and weigh around 10,000 pounds. That would normally be time-consuming, costly and risky, said Andrea Pistone of the Lab’s Project Programs Office, so finding a qualified and licensed electrical equipment recycling company to responsibly handle them was critical.

The private facility the lab contracted with, which the lab did not name, will recycle all the oil and metal, and in a few cases, incinerate small amounts of the electrical devices’ residual PCB-contaminated oil in accordance with environmental regulations under the Toxic Substances Control Act. Such treatment ensures the contaminant doesn’t linger in the environment.

“We drastically improved our environmental liability by getting these devices off-site,” Waste Management division leader Ronnie Garcia said.

A second shipment with additional transformers and capacitors, also estimated to be about 39,000 pounds, is slated for early March.

“We’re making great strides,” said Pistone. “Now that the proof of concept is done, we’re in the process of developing what truck two will look like.”