Case Study: Chemrec achieves turnkey solvent recycling and substantial cost savings with Veolia North America

A Turnkey Solvent Recycling Service

Chemrec, a Cowansville, QC solvent-recycling facility founded in 1990, needed to prove that recycled solvents could meet a large steel mill’s very strict production specifications. The challenge was overcoming the steel mill’s quality concerns so it would reuse, rather than dispose of, recovered solvents; Chemrec operated as a division under Veolia North America and offered a turnkey solvent recycling service using state-of-the-art distillation and in situ laboratory testing.

Veolia North America’s Chemrec team spent a year developing and testing recycled formulations with the steel mill and secured independent lab certification, then implemented a distillation-based regeneration process that restores roughly 70% of used solvents. With rigorous quality control, secondary containment, and full hazardous-material documentation, Veolia North America enabled the mill to routinely reuse solvents, simplify solvent management (combined collection and delivery), and realize substantial cost savings—the mill now gives the service a perfect annual score.

Chemrec