How we Recycle Isopropyl Alcohol (IPA)

At Ember we try to minimize our environmental footprint as much as possible. Being a part of the 3D printing industry, we’re adding a significant amount of plastic waste into the ecosystem. Couple that with solvent waste and that makes things even worse.

Many people in the industry don’t talk about the “dark side” of 3D printing. This typically revolves around solvent waste, and post-processing labour. In most municipalities, solvent waste cannot be easily recycled. In fact, we have paid chemical companies in the past to take our solvent waste, only to discover that they dispose of it by incineration.

Because of their disposal method and additional costs as well as inconveniences associated with delivery or pickup of the waste, we decided to purchase our own solvent distillation machine. It’s been a great decision so far and we’re thankful that we can take a step forward in reducing our environmental impact in this plastics heavy industry!

Uni-ram URS500

We absolutely love this machine.

Not only is it better for the environment, but it reduces solvent cost, is more convenient and allows us to change IPA at much higher frequencies, resulting in easier SLA clean up.

Solvent waste

The recycler works by boiling IPA, condensing it, and leaving all the impurities in a bag. This bag can be disposed of in the garbage.

This essentially condenses down the waste to a small bag, eliminates the need to drive and pay for disposal, and prevents the solvent from having to be incinerated.

Recycled IPA

Crystal clear IPA is the end result of the distillation cycle. We absolutely love this machine and highly recommend to any other 3D printing outfit!