JPH0422483A - Apparatus for evaporative concentration treatment of waste photographic processing solution - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To achieve the miniaturization and cost reduction of the title apparatus with good heat efficiency by providing a filter having a large number of through-holes with a diameter of 0.5mum-2mm to a route supplying a waste photographic processing solution. CONSTITUTION:When a valve 20 is opened, a waste solution is sucked up from a container 19 under reduced pressure to be sprinkled from the nozzle 21 provided to the upper part in a culumn 9 through a filter unit 26. The waste solution enters a hollow container from the inlet 31 thereof, but a cylindrical porous filter 29 is mounted on a bottom part and a lid 28 at both ends thereof in close contact therewith, and the waste solution is passed through the through-holes having a diameter of 0.5mum-2mm of the filter 29 to be discharged from the upper part of an inner cylinder 27 through an outlet 30. The solid in the solution remains between the filter 29 and the outer cylinder of the filter unit 26 and, therefore, the contaminated filter 29 is removed at the time of replacement by opening the lid 28.

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] [Industrial Application Field] The present invention is a method for evaporating waste liquid (hereinafter referred to as photographic processing waste liquid or waste liquid) generated during the processing of photographic light-sensitive materials using an automatic photographic processor. The present invention relates to a processing device, and particularly to a processing device for photographic processing waste liquid suitable for processing by being disposed in or near an automatic processor.

[Conventional technology]

Generally, photographic processing of silver halide light-sensitive materials is carried out in the order of color development, bleach-fixing (or bleaching and fixing), and water washing or stabilization processing.

In photographic processing in which a large amount of light-sensitive material is processed, components consumed during processing are replenished, while components that are eluted into the processing solution or concentrated by evaporation during processing (for example, bromide ions in the developer, bromide ions in the fixer), etc. A method is used to maintain the performance of the processing solution at a constant level by removing substances such as silver complex salts (such as silver complex salts) and keeping the processing components constant. A portion of the processing solution is discarded to remove concentrated components.

In recent years, systems have been changing to systems in which the amount of replenishment fluid, including washing water, which is used as a replenishment fluid for washing, has been significantly reduced due to pollution and economic reasons, but photographic processing waste fluid is removed from the processing tank of automatic processors. It is led through a waste liquid pipe, diluted with waste liquid from washing water, cooling water from automatic processing machines, etc., and then disposed of in a sewer or the like.

However, due to stricter pollution regulations in recent years, it is possible to dispose of washing water and cooling water into sewers or rivers, but other photographic processing solutions [e.g. developer, fixer, color developer, bleach-fixer] (or bleaching solution, fixing solution), stabilizing solution, etc.] has become virtually impossible to dispose of. For this reason, each photo processing company pays a collection fee to a specialized waste liquid processing company to collect the waste liquid, or installs pollution treatment equipment. However, the method of outsourcing to a waste liquid treatment company is
It takes a considerable amount of space to store the waste liquid (a base is required, and it is also extremely expensive), and the initial investment (initial cost) for pollution treatment equipment is extremely large, and it takes quite a large area to set up. It has disadvantages such as requiring a large space.

Therefore, waste liquid is generally collected by waste liquid collection companies and rendered harmless through secondary and tertiary processing, but not only is the price of waste liquid collection rising year by year due to rising collection costs, but collection efficiency is low in minilabs, etc., so it is difficult to do so. No one can come to collect the liquid, causing problems such as waste liquid filling the store.

In order to solve these problems, research has been conducted to heat the photographic processing waste liquid to evaporate the water to dryness or solidify it, with the aim of making it easier to process the photographic processing waste liquid even in minilabs. It is shown in JP-A No. 60-70841 and the like. By the way, the inventors' research has shown that when photographic processing waste liquid is evaporated, harmful or extremely malodorous gases such as sulfur dioxide gas, hydrogen sulfide, and ammonia gas are generated. It has been found that this is caused by the decomposition of ammonium thiosulfate and sulfites (ammonium salt, sodium salt, or potassium salt), which are commonly used as fixing solutions and bleach-fixing solutions in photographic processing solutions, due to high temperatures. Further, during the evaporation process, moisture and the like in the photographic processing waste liquid becomes vapor and gasifies, thereby expanding the volume and increasing the pressure in the evaporation pot. Therefore, due to this pressure, the harmful or malodorous gas leaks out of the evaporation treatment apparatus to the outside of the apparatus, resulting in an extremely unfavorable working environment.

Therefore, in order to solve these problems,
No. 1 discloses a method of providing an exhaust gas treatment section such as activated carbon in the exhaust pipe section of an evaporation treatment device. However, this method has the serious drawback that water vapor from a large amount of water in the photographic processing waste liquid condenses or condenses in the exhaust gas treatment section, covering the gas absorption processing agent and causing it to instantly lose its gas absorption ability. However, it has not yet been put to practical use.

[Problem to be solved by the invention]

In order to solve these problems, the present inventors condensed the vapor produced by evaporation when processing waste photographic processing liquid by evaporation, and further treated the condensate produced by condensation and also treated non-condensed components. We have previously proposed a device for concentrating photographic processing waste liquid that is discharged to the outside.

However, according to this proposal, the following problems were found. In other words, when performing evaporative concentration, if there is solid matter (such as dust) in the photographic processing waste liquid injected into the evaporative concentration column, it will cause bumping during heating.
As a result, scattered sludge and the like enter the steam path and are mixed into the distilled liquid, which sometimes ends up having the same pollution load as waste liquid.

In order to prevent this bumping, it is necessary to remove solids mixed in the supplied photographic waste liquid.

In particular, mud bumping is likely to occur when evaporative concentration is performed under reduced pressure, and the above measures are essential.

The reason for performing evaporative concentration under reduced pressure is to take advantage of the fact that the boiling point of water decreases under reduced pressure, and to evaporate water at a low temperature, and this low temperature is 100°C or less, preferably 10°C. to 80° C. At this temperature, decomposition of the photographic processing waste liquid does not occur, and therefore, it is effective in suppressing the generation of responsible gases and the like.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION An object of the present invention is to provide an apparatus for evaporating and concentrating photographic processing waste liquid, which has a means for removing solid matter from the supply path of the photographic processing waste liquid.

[Means to solve the problem]

The purpose is achieved by any one of the following means (1), (2), (3), and (4).

(1) A photograph having a heating section that receives photographic processing waste liquid and performs heat evaporation using a heating means, a condensing section that cools and condenses the generated vapor using a cooling means, and a means for supplying the photographic processing waste liquid to the heating section. In the evaporation concentration processing device for processing waste liquid, a filter having a large number of through holes with hole diameters of 2 mm or less and 0.5 microns or more is provided in the path for supplying the photographic processing waste liquid. Evaporative concentration treatment equipment for photographic processing waste liquid.

(2) The apparatus for evaporating and concentrating photographic processing waste liquid according to item (1) above, wherein the heating means is a heating section of a heat pump.

(3) The above-mentioned item (1), characterized in that the heating evaporation concentration by the heating means is performed under reduced pressure, and an obstacle is provided in the path where the steam exits from the heating section. The evaporative concentration processing apparatus for photographic processing waste liquid described above.

(4) The apparatus for evaporating and concentrating photographic processing waste liquid according to item (3) above, wherein the heating means is a heating section of a heat pump.

In this invention, the heating section of the heat pump confines refrigerant gas in a closed loop connected by pipes including a compressor, and releases the refrigerant gas, which has been compressed and heated by the compressor, into one of the pipes. By bringing the object to be heated into contact with this tube wall as a boundary and heating the object,
A configuration is shown in which the heat of the heated refrigerant gas is released.

The cooling section of a heat pump is the refrigerant of the heat pump whose temperature decreases on the suction side of the compressor in the closed loop, and the cooled object ( In this case, it shows a configuration in which the object to be cooled is cooled by contacting it with water vapor.

Both the heating section of the heat pump and the cooling section of the heat pump are spirally formed with pipes in order to increase the heat transfer surface area and improve heat transfer efficiency.

Next, the reason why a depressurizing means is used to reduce the pressure of the entire waste liquid is to lower the evaporation temperature of water in the waste liquid by heating it under reduced pressure. This is because we focused on the effect of efficiently evaporating only water by keeping the temperature below C, without decomposing ammonium thiosulfate, sulfite, etc. contained in the waste liquid.

The reason why the heating part of the heat pump is continuously provided from the concentrated liquid to above the liquid level and/or from above the liquid level into the concentrated liquid is that by using this configuration, bumping of the photographic processing waste liquid due to heating can be controlled, This is because they discovered the effect of increasing evaporation efficiency.

The inventor's observation clearly shows a phenomenon in which the vapor transfer is accelerated by the heating above the liquid surface, and it is thought that this effect improves the evaporation efficiency from the concentrated liquid.

In an experimental comparison, the configuration of this invention has a 25%
The result was that the amount of evaporated water was slightly larger than that of the one in which only the liquid was heated.

Furthermore, the heating section for the photographic processing waste liquid and the steam condensing section were connected to reduce the overall pressure.The reason for this was to improve the evaporation rate by reducing the pressure and shorten the route to the condensing section, thereby reducing the size and cost of the device. It is something.

Furthermore, since a filter for removing solid matter is provided in the path for supplying the photographic processing waste liquid, bumping can be prevented during heating.

〔Example〕

Next, embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a sectional view illustrating the overall configuration of the embodiment.

When the water circulation pump 14 is started, the water pumped up from the container 16 is vigorously blown downward from the ejector 15. At this time, the air passage 23 connected in a T-shape by the ejector 15 becomes under negative pressure, so when the valve 18 is opened, the vapor condensing section 8 and the evaporation concentration column (hereinafter sometimes simply referred to as "Carano") connected thereto are connected to the vapor condensing section 8. Air is sucked out from the air chamber 9, and these, the vapor condensing section 8 and the column 9 are depressurized.

Next, when the valve 20 is opened, the waste liquid is sucked up from the container 19 by the reduced pressure, passes through the filter unit 26, and is sprayed into the column 9 from the nozzle 21 provided at the upper part of the column 9. When the waste liquid accumulates in the column 9 and reaches the liquid level A, the liquid level sensor 22 detects this, closes the valve 20, and stops liquid injection. The valve 20 may be a solenoid valve.

Next, the filter unit 26 will be explained.

Waste liquid enters from the inlet 31 of the hollow container, and a cylindrical porous filter 29 is attached to the bottom and both ends of the tube 28 in close contact with each other.
The liquid passes through the inner cylinder 2 (through hole of 5 microns or more)
The structure is such that the liquid is discharged from the upper part of the filter 7 through the outlet 30, and solid matter in the liquid remains between the filter 29 and the outer cylinder of the filter unit 26, so open the filter 28 and remove the dirty filter. It is removed when performing the 29 exchange.

In this example, a cylindrical filter was used, but the invention is not limited to this; the liquid can flow using a flat filter as a boundary, or the filter may simply be packed in the middle of a straight pipe. .

The inventor noticed that bumping was especially severe when supplying photographic waste liquid, and tried to prevent solid matter that would cause bumping from being mixed into the supplied waste liquid.

The preferred range of the hole diameter of the filter is 0.5 micron to 1 mm, more preferably 1 micron to 0.5 mm.
It is.

Next, the heat pump 1 will be explained in detail. Heat pump 1 uses compressor 2 and air-cooled condensation! 11 unit 3, a propeller fan 4 driven by a fan motor 5, a heating section 6, a cooling coil 13, a cooling section 7, a vibrator connecting these, and a refrigerant injected into this system.

The refrigerant compressed by the compressor 2 reaches a high temperature and is blown out toward the air-cooled condenser 3. Here, forced air cooling is performed using a propeller fan 4 driven by a fan motor 5. This is done in order to prevent the heat pump from running out of control, control the temperature of the heating section 6, and prevent gas generation due to high temperatures.

Next, the refrigerant that has reached an appropriate temperature due to the forced air cooling is heated to a heating section 6.
to go into. The heating unit 6 is also disposed continuously above the liquid level of the waste liquid injected into the column 9 below the liquid level A.
The part below heats the waste liquid, and the part above the liquid surface heats the generated steam.

The refrigerant that has passed through the heating s6 passes through the dryer 11 and the capillary tube 10, enters the cooling coil 13, cools the water injected into the container 16, and then enters the cooling section 7. After cooling the vapor evaporated from the column 9, the refrigerant returns to the compressor 2 to complete one cycle, and this cycle is repeated.

The features of this configuration are that the water blowing force of the water circulation pump is used as a pressure reduction means, and the water is cooled with the heat pump's refrigerant. By using a (condenser) to heat steam not only below the liquid level but also above the liquid level, the upward movement of evaporated steam is accelerated and evaporation efficiency is greatly improved. It is.

Furthermore, as an efficient design, by reducing the pressure in the column 9, by opening the valve 20, the waste liquid is pumped up and put into the column 9 without a liquid pump, which is effective for efficiency and compactness. .

When heating evaporation is carried out under reduced pressure with the above configuration, a phenomenon occurs in which the waste liquid violently splashes upward from the waste liquid surface of the column 9. To prevent this from entering the cooling section 7, a splash prevention is performed. Plate 24 is provided.

Figure 2 (a), (b), Figure 3 (a), (b), Figure 4
An embodiment of the splash prevention plate 24 is shown in FIG.

In the embodiment shown in the side sectional view of FIG. 2(a) and the top view of FIG. 2(b), splash prevention plates 24 protruding from the wall surface are arranged alternately from both sides, and the sludge splashes up from below. so that it cannot pass upwards.

In the embodiment shown in the side sectional view of FIG. 3(a) and the top view of FIG. 3(b), the splash prevention plate 24 is of a type in which a plurality of perforated plates 24K are fixed to the wall surface, These holes are located at different positions on the upper and lower plates to stop sludge flowing straight from below.

In the embodiment shown in the side cross-sectional view of FIG.
Since the periphery of the umbrella 24a overlaps with the receiving tray 24b, the sludge splashed up from below does not pass upward, and the sludge that collects on the umbrella 24a falls into the receiving tray 24b and is collected. be done. The embodiment shown in the side cross-sectional view of FIG. 5 is one in which a lint-like porous member is packed inside in layers, and in this case, sludge adheres to the member and causes clogging, so it is necessary to replace it as appropriate.

The generated water vapor is cooled and condensed in the cooling section 7 and collected as water droplets at the bottom 8C1 of the steam condensing section 8, but is discharged into the container 16 through the valve 18 by the pressure reducing means. The container 16 is provided with an overflow port, and the water overflowing with the condensed water flows into the condensed water tank 35 through a pipe 36 and is collected.

As evaporation concentration progresses and the waste liquid becomes sludge,
There is a point where the balance of the cooling/heating cycle as described above suddenly collapses, and this is detected when the refrigerant temperature at the outlet of the compressor 2 after compression suddenly changes from 100'0 to 120'C. Therefore, by detecting this temperature change using a temperature sensor, the compressor 2 is stopped and the water circulation pump 14 is stopped to detect that the waste liquid has turned into sludge.

At this time, since the container 16 is open to atmospheric pressure, the water in the container 16 is reduced to the air passage 23 due to the reduced pressure in the condensing section 8.
In order to prevent this, the valve 18 is designed as a three-way valve, and the air passage 2 is closed at the time of the stop.
The third side is closed, leaving an opening to the atmosphere.

However, instead of a three-way valve, an electromagnetic valve or the like for opening and closing an opening communicating with the atmosphere may be provided in the air passage 23, and this may be opened and balanced at atmospheric pressure at the same time as the above-mentioned stop.

Thereafter, the valve 25 at the bottom of the column 9 is opened to discharge the sludge. The sludge collected here contains a high concentration of silver, so it is stored in a sealed container as a valuable resource, and the silver is collected separately before being disposed of at an appropriate location.

In addition, the concentration level with this device is 18 to 20 in total waste liquid.
It can be concentrated up to twice as much, and the sludge conversion rate is apparently 98%.

〔Effect of the invention〕

With this configuration, the apparatus for evaporating and concentrating photographic processing waste liquid can be made more thermally efficient, smaller, and lower in cost.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS FIG. 1 is a sectional view of one embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 2(a), FIG. 3(a), FIG. 4, and FIG. 5 are side sectional views of each embodiment of the splash prevention plate 24. FIG. 2(b) and FIG. 3(b) are top views of the embodiment shown in FIG. 2(a) and FIG. 3(a), respectively. 1...Heat pump 2...Compressor 3.
...Air-cooled condenser 4...Propeller fan 5...
Fan heater 6... Heating section (condenser) 7... Cooling section (evaporator) 8... Vapor condensing section 9... Evaporation concentration column (column) 10... Cavitary tube 11... Dryer 13...Cooling coil 14
...Water circulation pump 15...Ejector 16.
... Container 17 ... Pressure reducing means 18 ... Valve 19 ... Container 20 ... Valve 21 ... Nozzle 22 ... Liquid level sensor 23 ... Air path 24 ...
Splash prevention plate 25... Valve 26... Filter unit 27... Inner cylinder 28... Lid 29...
Filter 30... Outlet 31... Inlet

Claims (4)

[Claims] (1) A photograph having a heating section that receives photographic processing waste liquid and performs heat evaporation using a heating means, a condensing section that cools and condenses the generated vapor using a cooling means, and a means for supplying the photographic processing waste liquid to the heating section. A photographic processing waste liquid characterized in that, in an evaporation concentration processing apparatus for processing waste liquid, a filter having a large number of through holes with hole diameters of 2 mm or less and 0.5 microns or more is provided in the path for supplying the photographic processing waste liquid. evaporation concentration processing equipment. (2) The apparatus for evaporating and concentrating photographic processing waste liquid according to claim 1, wherein the heating means is a heating section of a heat pump. (3) The heating evaporation concentration by the heating means is performed under reduced pressure, and an obstacle is provided in a path through which the steam exits from the heating section at a rate of 2 kcal/cm^2.hr or less. Evaporative concentration treatment equipment for photographic processing waste liquid. (4) The apparatus for evaporating and concentrating photographic processing waste liquid according to claim 3, wherein the heating means is a heating section of a heat pump.