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PrussianBlue
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Responsible Chemical Waste Disposal
Before I seriously begin to do some home experimenting, a major concern I have is the safe and environmentally responsible disposal of
chemical waste. At this point, I do not plan on using any chemicals that I cannot obtain from OTC products (thinners, pool chemicals, etc.). Will my
local hazardous waste facility be my best bet?
Their accepted waste list includes:
Paints
Stains
Varnishes
Solvents
Garden pesticides
Flammable products
Poisons
Adhesives
Aerosol cans
Lawn care products
Cleaners
Automotive chemicals
I want to take safe waste disposal quite seriously, so any added insight will be greatly appreciated.
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woelen
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I myself do the following:
- Evaporate organic solvents in air, outside, or burn them away, outside.
- Solutions of toxic metal salts I put in a bottle. I label this bottle with text, telling that it contains heavy metals in solution (the chemical
symbol of each of the metals in the solution I put between parentheses in smaller script), and when I bring it to our local hazardous waste facility I
tell them it is waste from my photography dark room. Never any questions asked, and still safely brought away with right label. I bring at most a few
liters, do not bring big jerry cans full of waste!
- Common inorganic acids I flush away with a lot of water.
- Common strong bases I flush away with a lot of water.
- Solutions of alkali metals, earth alkali metals, B, Al, Fe, Cr(III), Si, Ge, Mn, Sn, Bi and Ti I also flush with a lot of water.
- Cr(VI) I reduce with dil. HCl and Na2SO3 and then flush away.
- Most inorganic simple anions can be flushed away (if the counter ion is not a toxic heavy metal). There are a few which I do not flush away:
selenium-based, tellurium-based, arsenic-based, antimony-based, lead-based, most transition-metal anions, such as vanadates, molybdates.
I work in micro quantities (test tubes). In that way, the amount of waste is very small and that's why I feel no issue with flushing a few tens of mg
or maybe 100 mg of e.g. Cr(3+) or Mn-salts away. The really toxic stuff, however, I keep.
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CobaltChloride
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A few basic rules I adhere to when dealing with inorganic waste:
1) If your waste only contains alkaline, alkaline-earth metals (besides barium), aluminium and non-toxic anions (Cl, Br, I, SO4, SO3 etc.), it can be
safely disposed down the drain. You can also dispose of small quantities (a few grams or so) of iron and chromium III this way.
2) If your waste has a toxic cation and a non-toxic anion, see if there is a way of recycling the metal. For example, I collect all my copper waste in
a big PET bottle. After it is filled 2/3 of the volume, I add sodium carbonate to precipitate the copper. This also applies to Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Zn, Ba
and other metals. The carbonate can be heated together with crushed coke or charcoal to recover the metal (besides BaCO3).
For silver you can just add table salt and thus recover the valuable silver.
For lead I can't really say for sure what you should do as I haven't used it yet, but I think you could add some sort of sulfate and then recover
the PbSO4. I'm not sure if the remaining liquid contains enough lead to be an environmental threat, so you'd better ask someone else.
I haven't dealt with tin yet so I can't say what you should do with that.
For mercury there are multiple procedures online (see Cody'sLab video and NileRed's video)
3) If your waste has a benign cation but a dangerous anion, try to see if there's any way to neutralize the anion in any way. For example, cyanides
react with hypochlorites to make harmless products. Also, chromates and dichromates react with reducing agents (thiosulfates, sulfites, metabisulfites
etc.) to make much less dangerous chromium III.
4) If you're dealing with a nonmetal/ metalloid in elemental form or as molecular compounds, research how to deal with it yourself as the people at
the hazardous waste facility are not equipped to deal with them and all nonmetals/metalloids are treated differently. There are some completely
harmless ones, like silicon and carbon, but there's also some dangerous ones, like sulfur, selenium, arsenic and antimony.
5) If your waste is strongly alkaline or acidic, you can pour it down the drain in small quantities. If there's a lot of waste, you'd need to at least
partially neutralize it.
A few rules I adhere to when dealing with organic waste:
1) Collect all solvents in separate containers, label them and bring them to the local hazardous waste facility
2) If your waste only has non-toxic carboxylic acids (formic, acetic, citric, oxalic and others) and their salts of non-toxic cations (the ones
mention in the first point in the inorganic category), you can dispose of it down the drain
3) Disposal of all other organic waste has to be researched before the experiment to see if it is possible to safely do it. If it's not doable by an
amateur, then I don't attempt the reaction.
If I'm wrong on any of these, please inform me as I don't want to be unknowingly destroying the environment.
[Edited on 26-3-2018 by CobaltChloride]
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PrussianBlue
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I've been informed (but have not confirmed) that the EPA prohibits the open evaporation of any non-aqueous liquid waste in the US. I don't plan on
using any heavy metals, highly toxic substances, etc., so I'm not too worried about the disposal of those. My primary concern is the disposal of
halogenated organic waste as this will likely come up in the near future. My thoughts are that since some OTC solvents are halogenated organics (e.g.
DCM), the hazardous waste facility can likely properly dispose of them.
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woelen
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Evaporation of liters of organic waste is not good, but if you produce e.g. 10 ml of DCM waste, then I would not worry about that and simply evaporate
it outside.
With all these things you must put your waste in perspective. If your neighbour is stripping the paint from his wood panels and uses a liter of paint
stripper, based on DCM, and you use a few tens of ml of DCM in chemical experiments, then you can draw your own conclusion. The laws you mention are
not about tens of ml, not even about liters, otherwise no one could use the product in a home/hobby setting. These laws are for tonnes of chemical
waste, produced by factories/big companies on an annual basis.
I work with something like a toxicity-volume product. If I have very toxic waste (e.g. mercury salts, thallium), then I have near-zero emission to the
sewer system or into the air (just a granule, the size of a table salt granule may get into the sewer, but not much more), if the waste is not that
toxic (e.g. DCM), then a few tens of ml for my few experiments with it on a yearly basis is no issue for me.
Of course, if you use 50 ml of e.g. DCM every day, then things become another matter, but I expect you to use a certain chemical only once or twice
for an experiment and then you do not use it for a long time.
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Ubya
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Quote: Originally posted by woelen  | Evaporation of liters of organic waste is not good, but if you produce e.g. 10 ml of DCM waste, then I would not worry about that and simply evaporate
it outside.
With all these things you must put your waste in perspective. If your neighbour is stripping the paint from his wood panels and uses a liter of paint
stripper, based on DCM, and you use a few tens of ml of DCM in chemical experiments, then you can draw your own conclusion. The laws you mention are
not about tens of ml, not even about liters, otherwise no one could use the product in a home/hobby setting. These laws are for tonnes of chemical
waste, produced by factories/big companies on an annual basis.
Of course, if you use 50 ml of e.g. DCM every day, then things become another matter, but I expect you to use a certain chemical only once or twice
for an experiment and then you do not use it for a long time. |
evaporating 10ml of DCM once in a while outside won't do much of a harm, you are right, but also 1 can of freon won't harm anyone once in a while, i
know this is an exaggerated example but if everybody thinks like this we would have a worse enviroment. if you make 10ml of solvent waste just keep it
until you got a reasonable amount to dispose, it's the best enviromental solution
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feel free to correct my grammar, or any mistakes i make
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aga
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It's pretty much the same no matter what you're doing: don't make a lot of mess/waste to deal with after the fun is over.
My one big gaff (so far) was getting all excited about gold recovery.
Still processing the gallons of waste that got made needlessly - takes all the fun out of it.
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BromicAcid
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I worked in the hazardous waste industry for some time so I could go into detail about what should be done and how you could accomplish it.
That being said, they do a yearly 'clean sweep' event in my city where you can bring in whatever chemicals you want to dispose of. I do oil painting
and I usually bring in several jars just labeled flammable. They never ask what they are (mineral spirit, turpentine, etc) they just take them away.
I usually point out that it contains cadmium, chromium, etc., but they don't bat an eye. I also bring in containers of paper towels, again containing
cadmium, chromium, and other metals from the pigments and they take those away as well. My point being that they usually don't have any questions
because most people don't have answers, if they have an event like this in your area you can probably take advantage of it. When my mother-in-law
passed away I had plenty of random chemicals that were not identified. Things like pool chlorinator (I would guess by the smell) in a random plastic
bottle and they took those as well. Use sane judgment but at least for flammables and metal waste it might be a viable disposal method.
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MrHomeScientist
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Something that would be interesting and enlightening is to research how the official disposal companies deal with various wastes. As a potentially bad
example: If they simply incinerate everything, then you're fine doing the same.
BromicAcid, if you have some documentation you could point us to I'd love to read it! This is a very important topic for amateur chemists.
[Edited on 3-30-2018 by MrHomeScientist]
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RawWork
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This topic is not only chemistry problem, but general problem. Disposal of any waste. Bio, nuclear, electronic, natural, animal, whatever we call it.
I would not call it disposal but management. Energy or mass is never destroyed or produced. Being able to live with a plan, knowing how to manage
everything in advance, first for yourself, than for whole world.
Good starting point is wikipedia, i always start learning from templates:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Waste
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Environmental_technol...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Wastewater
[Edited on 30-3-2018 by RawWork]
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officescape
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Could be a possible business opportunity?
Create/buy a high temperature industrial furnace
Offer small-scale/one-off disposal services
Profit!
Most of the disposal companies I have worked with are not interested in one-offs or small scale but there is an obvious need as small companies and
hobbyists don't have rotovaps or want to keep buckets of waste around to be picked up by a disposal company.
Now that I think of it, how do most modern disposal companies tend to do it? I imagine furnaces don't scale up well but neither does solvent
evaporation.
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JJay
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What is the best way to dispose of barium waste? Neutralize with sulfuric acid and dispose of as a poison?
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Deathunter88
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| Quote: Originally posted by JJay | | What is the best way to dispose of barium waste? Neutralize with sulfuric acid and dispose of as a poison? |
Once it's in the form of barium sulfate, there really is no need to treat it as a poison anymore.
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JJay
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That seems reasonable. Barium sulfate is so inert that you could probably grow vegetables in it (not that I'd suggest it).
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MrHomeScientist
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They even let you drink it! To take x-rays of your digestive system; called a 'barium meal.' I had to do that once. Very chalky tasting.
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Heptylene
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Personally I have four containers for the waste I produce:
1) Toxic heavy metals liquid waste, that is everything except Li, Na, K, Rb, Cs, Mg, Ca, Sr, Ba, Ti and Fe. And I recycle copper, silver, and the
other very expensive metals. I haven't decided what to do with this, but storing it is not a problem for now.
2) Non-halogenated organic solvents, with only minute traces of halogenated compounds. This I will likely burn at some point.
3) Halogenated organic solvents, which consists of only DCM at the moment, and which I will recycle when I have enough of it.
4) Organic aqueous waste. This will be evaporated to a solid and thrown in the trash as incinerable waste.
Acids and bases I just dump down the drain. After all sulfuric acid and sodium hydroxide are used as drain cleaner...
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DavidJR
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| Quote: Originally posted by MrHomeScientist | | They even let you drink it! To take x-rays of your digestive system; called a 'barium meal.' I had to do that once. Very chalky tasting.
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They also do the same thing up the other end...
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Abromination
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How concerned should I be about the toxicity of copper salts? I have about 5 liters of waste in storage dedicated to compatible copper salts. Also,
due to mild toxicity of lithium salts, can those just be flushed down the sink? I ask about the copper salts because I would like to know if I should
bring it into
hazardous waste or just get rid of it otherwise.
List of materials made by ScienceMadness.org users:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nmJ8uq-h4IkXPxD5svnT...
--------------------------------
Elements Collected: H, Li, B, C, N, O, Mg, Al, Si, P, S, Fe, Ni, Cu, Zn, Ag, I, Au, Pb, Bi, Am
Last Acquired: B
Next: Na
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CobaltChloride
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In my opinion, the best course of action is adding sodium carbonate (be careful; it will foam a lot) or sodium hydroxide to the copper waste until the
pH is basic and then pouring the liquid down the drain and saving the solid precipitate of copper hydroxide (in the case of NaOH) or basic copper
carbonate (in the case of Na2CO3).
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mayko
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I reclaim my copper waste by precipitation of the metal with scrap iron, then add baking soda to the iron solution to get iron oxide.
al-khemie is not a terrorist organization
"Chemicals, chemicals... I need chemicals!" - George Hayduke
"Wubbalubba dub-dub!" - Rick Sanchez
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Heptylene
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@Abromination: You might want to add NaOH to your copper salts (provided there is enough of them to make recovery worthwile) and boil the solution.
This will yield a precipitate of copper(II) hydroxide which decomposes immediately into copper(II) oxide in boiling water. This can then be filtered
or decanted and used to make other copper salts by reaction with the appropriate acid. Copper oxide is very handy because you don't need to oxidize
the copper again, such that reaction with e.g. sulfuric acid will be immediate.
The waste solution should be harmless after this treatment considering the low solubility of copper hydroxide and oxide, and assuming there isn't
anything else in it besides copper salts.
Lithium I don't think is toxic enough to warrant a specific treatment unless you have hundreds of grams of it.
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fusso
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Why throw away the common metal waste(all metals other than Na Mg Al K Ca Fe. Even Zn is worth saving as you may not obtain old batteries as fast as
you use Zn)? I think they're worth saving and turned into useful compounds after saving like 100g of them.
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Abromination
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How can ammonia waste be disposed of? I have a large amount from making tetraamminediaquacopper dihydroxide and want to know what to do with it before
pouring it down the drain.
List of materials made by ScienceMadness.org users:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nmJ8uq-h4IkXPxD5svnT...
--------------------------------
Elements Collected: H, Li, B, C, N, O, Mg, Al, Si, P, S, Fe, Ni, Cu, Zn, Ag, I, Au, Pb, Bi, Am
Last Acquired: B
Next: Na
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JJay
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Ammonia solutions can be put down the drain.
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Mush
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| Quote: Originally posted by Abromination | | How can ammonia waste be disposed of? I have a large amount from making tetraamminediaquacopper dihydroxide and want to know what to do with it before
pouring it down the drain. |
Neutralise with acid first (carefully with any acid), then it can go to the drain. You don't want pissed off neighbours knonking on your door due to
NH3 gas in drainage system.
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