How should an Ankleshwar bulk drug unit count emissions from solvent recovery and incineration?
Steam and power used to distil solvents back for reuse are ordinary Scope 1 and 2. Solvent you burn in your own incinerator or thermal oxidiser is Scope 1 at its carbon content. Solvent waste sent to a common incinerator is Scope 3, Category 5, using the operator's figure or a stated estimate.
Three routes, three answers
- Recovered in house: count the steam and electricity used by the recovery columns.
- Burnt in your own incinerator: Scope 1, carbon in the solvent converted to CO2, plus any support fuel.
- Sent out to a common hazardous waste incinerator: Scope 3, waste generated in operations.
Working out the carbon
For a known solvent, the carbon fraction comes from its formula; toluene is about 91 percent carbon by mass, methanol about 37 percent. Multiply tonnes burnt by carbon fraction and by 44/12.
Records to keep
Solvent purchase invoices, recovery logs, incinerator feed records and manifests for waste sent out. They also support the solvent balance a pharma buyer may ask for.
Worked example: 10 tonnes of toluene burnt in your own oxidiser
- Carbon: 10 t x 0.913 = 9.13 t C
- CO2: 9.13 x 44/12 = 33.5 t CO2, Scope 1
- Plus the support fuel burnt, from the fuel invoices
Carbon fractions come from the chemical formula. Mixed solvent streams need the mix from the recovery log.
What Senseible does here
Senseible reads fuel, steam, electricity and raw material invoices into a dated, fingerprinted record per unit, so a product figure can be traced back to the documents behind it.
Sources: IPCC 2006 Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard, GHG Protocol Corporate Standard
Last reviewed 2026-10-21.