Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Waste disposal

UniversalSolvent - 4-6-2006 at 07:13

Well, I'm rather new to the hooby of chemistry, and I still don't know how to safely dispose of any reaction byproducts or any other chems that need safe disposal. I know haz-mat costs an arm and a leg, so that isn't availible to me.

I wanted to build a filter but don't really know what to charge it with, other than limestone for acid neutralization.

Your waste disposal methods and thoughts on filter design would be much appreciated. Thanks.

[Edited on 4-6-2006 by UniversalSolvent]

12AX7 - 4-6-2006 at 07:31

At the moment I flush everything down the sink.. not the greatest solution...

A bucket each for acids and metal ions, oxidizers, and bases, could be good. You'd want to keep the acids and bases seperate so you can neutralize them under control at a later time (don't want an extra bucketful of CO2 foam or something boiling over!). Limestone would be a good buffer, except in sulfate solutions. Oxidizers would be best kept seperate because they tend to be stable as-is, but unstable when mixed with acid (example: chlorate ions). (Note an acidic solution such as chromic acid would be best placed in the acid bucket for this reason.)

Organic wastes could be burned with hot nitric acid or persulfuric acid (Caro's acid or Fenton's reagent) and added to a waste bucket as appropriate.

When you've got some buckets full of stuff, you can decide what to do with them. A reducing agent would be good for the oxidizers, a reducing sugar or acid (glucose, citric or ascorbic acid, etc.), ferrous ions (with careful addition of acid if necessary) or sulfite (or hyposulfite, etc.). The metal ions could be precipitated by neutralization with soda ash (and maybe some EDTA?). Lead and barium of course can be neutralized with sulfate. Acids and bases can be neutralized directly. All in all, you should be able to get the waste down to solids and neutral pH, salty water (sodium, potassium, ammonium, calcium or magnesium (and more) chloride, sulfate or nitrate), which is plenty safe to flush down the sink.

If you really wanted to go all-out, you could distill off the water and any acids present, and fractionally crystallize all the salts present.

Tim

unionised - 4-6-2006 at 10:07

EDTA isn't likely to ppt much.
For the quantities that most of us use just flushing the stuff is probably OK.
A few, particularly nasty, things might be worth destroying first. Cyanide would be a case in point but, if you are using lots of that you really need to know all abouut what you are doing before you even think about starting.

leu - 5-7-2006 at 16:03

This article should be helpful :)

Attachment: chemicaldisposal.zip (54kB)
This file has been downloaded 985 times

The_Davster - 5-7-2006 at 16:17




Just kidding,

I don't usually work with really nasty heavy metals, but my Hg waste still sits in a film can in a baggie of sulfur. I recover precious metal waste, like silver, or if dilute just flush it. I let organics evaporate outside or if flammable I'll just keep them around till I have a fire in my backyard firepit. General waste, oxidizers etc, see above pic.

woelen - 6-7-2006 at 11:41

Quote:
Originally posted by UniversalSolvent
Well, I'm rather new to the hooby of chemistry, and I still don't know how to safely dispose of any reaction byproducts or any other chems that need safe disposal. I know haz-mat costs an arm and a leg, so that isn't availible to me.

I wanted to build a filter but don't really know what to charge it with, other than limestone for acid neutralization.

Your waste disposal methods and thoughts on filter design would be much appreciated. Thanks.

[Edited on 4-6-2006 by UniversalSolvent]

Be realistic and only put more effort in the things which really need that. Mosts acids, bases, and many salts can go down the drain without problem. There are some things, which I keep separate and bring to a proper waste processing facility. I have written a web page about this subject:

http://woelen.scheikunde.net/science/chem/exps/rules.html

Magpie - 6-7-2006 at 12:53

I agree with woelen on this. When you get concened about putting waste sulfuric acid down the drain just remember what Rooto is and what it is sold for.

Try not to put any particulates down the drain, and always use a lot of flush water.

For small amounts of water insolubles, like organic solvents, evaporate to the amosphere. I don't recommend burning - too dangerous.

Many municipalities offer a taxpayer supported hazardous waste disposal service (mine does). All you have to do is drop off the waste in a properly labeled container. My last drop off was 2 broken Hg thermometers.

pantone159 - 6-7-2006 at 15:07

I agree not to go overboard but there are some easy things to do:

Keep the size of your reactions as small as you can.

Most waste can go down the drain with lots of water.

Try and precipitate out particularly poisonous metals, and filter out the ppt before flushing the rest down the drain. Ideally this ppt would go to some hazmat disposal, but it's better as insoluble material in the trash than down the drain.

Reduce any Cr(VI) to Cr(III) (and then remove as hydroxide ppt as above). This is fun anyways, with the color changes. Whatever doesn't come out as ppt goes down the drain.

You can neutralize strong acids/bases/oxidizers/reducers with their opposites, vinegar is a convenient cheap acid, 'washing soda' (crappy Na2CO3) is a convenient cheap base, and leftover photo fixer is a convenient reducing agent. Then it goes down the drain.

Insolubles do *not* go down the drain. Applies both to solids and (organic) liquids. Currently I let water insoluble organics evaporate outside, but I'd like to advance to distilling and recovering them, either for reuse or hazmat disposal.

I wouldn't store much waste for later processing, deal with it as soon as practical.

Where I live, there is a city-run hazmat facility for 'household' waste, for free. My biggest concern is seeming 'suspicious' with chemistry waste rather than the usual batteries / paint thinner. Ideally, I'd send metal ppts and waste organic stuff this way.

ethan_c - 7-7-2006 at 06:48

In my high school chemistry class, the barometer in the room broke, spilling mercury all over. So the class that happened to be working at that time, using their sharp minds and intuition, made a snap judgement call and decided to pour all ~100 grams of it down the drain.
*smacks head on wall for several minutes*

If you take a good little flashlight and pull off the drain cover, you can just see it sitting down there at the bottom of the U-bend, happily evaporating Hg vapor into the classroom all day long.

When a similar thing happened in the physics room and the giant thermometer was discovered to be leaking and close to falling apart (by me), I very quickly offered to transform it into a density demonstration. I poured it all into a clear jar, threw in a rock, a paper clip, and a penny, superglued the top shut, and wrote a note on the bottom detailing exactly what should be done and what phone numbers should be called if the jar were ever to break or crack or otherwise become unsafe.

Moral of the story: you can pour chemical waste down the drain, but don't be stupid. U-bends and other contraptions down the line are meant to TRAP particles, and immiscible fluids are going to be just as immiscible in the sewer and in the ocean.

nitroglycol - 6-8-2006 at 04:52

Here's a thought- most municipalities have "household hazardous waste days" or the like where you can drop off wastes (often at no charge!) to be disposed of properly. So suppose you've got a bunch of wastes containing heavy metals. Just dump them into a half-empty paint can, mix well, and take it in as HHW. It will be disposed of responsibly, and nobody will be the wiser about your experiments.

Magpie - 6-8-2006 at 08:42

Typically what the Hazardous Waste people get are labeled containers of pesticides, solvents, paints, used motor oil, etc. This is best for the waste processor.

You also could submit it properly labeled, e.g., "heavy metals," "halogenated solvents," "non-halogenated organics," etc. But this could raise many questions from the local officials, which could come back to bite you. The best compromise for the home chemist may, unfortunately, be an unlabeled container. :(

woelen - 12-8-2006 at 10:09

I label the waste as photographic processing waste.

Metal salts go as "toner waste". This also gives a reasonable approximation of what it really is, because many photographic toners are based on the colorful properties of many transition metal salts.

Organic solvents I put on a large towel and I let this evaporate outside. In that way I am rid of the solvents and in the atmosphere those few ml's from my experiments are not a real concern.

Quince - 11-12-2006 at 04:57

Quote:
Originally posted by woelen
http://woelen.scheikunde.net/science/chem/exps/rules.html

This link is not working for me.

Anyway, I flush everything down the sink. I even flushed down some old nitroglycerin once. Think of it this way: if it will get past your pipes without damaging them, why give a shit? Not like anything you could possibly flush would compare to a tiny fraction of the pollution coming from X (replace 'X' with your favorite polluter). And in any case, if it gets past your pipes, it's not your problem anymore.

unionised - 11-12-2006 at 09:25

Why give a shit?
Imagine I'm a trawlerman.
However many fish I catch, the other fishermen will always land as many fish as they can. For me to cut back only harms my income- it doesn't make any difference overall. I might as well over-fish too.

Now imagine all the trawlermen think that way.
Now think about what has happened to cod stocks in several of the worlds major fisheries.

It's not your problem anymore to exactly the same extent as it's not on your plannet anymore.
OK so you aren't a major polluter, but the mind-set is wrong.

[Edited on 11-12-2006 by unionised]

Quince - 11-12-2006 at 10:55

You miss something very important. There are very few of us. Even if all of us dumped all our nasties down the drain, it wouldn't make an iota of difference in the big picture. In the end, it's a numbers game.

Still, nice try on the parable there ;P

[Edited on 11-12-2006 by Quince]

unionised - 11-12-2006 at 11:46

"There are very few of us. Even if all of us dumped all our nasties down the drain,..."
There are roughly six billion of us, and we do.

Of course this is slightly at odds with what I said earlier in the thread.
"For the quantities that most of us use just flushing the stuff is probably OK."
What I mean is that we should flush the stuff but worry about the effect we are having:D

Quince - 11-12-2006 at 11:56

Quote:
Originally posted by unionised
What I mean is that we should flush the stuff but worry about the effect we are having:D

Ah, your way is the guilt carrier's way. Was that the catholic thing or the jewish thing? I forget...

unionised - 11-12-2006 at 12:15

God knows- I'm an atheist

maozim - 11-12-2006 at 12:23

Quince,

You assume that everyone lives in an environment as polluted as your ethics. Most pollution does not directly affect “everyone” but instead has a direct impact on the greater local waterways. The closer you are to it, the greater impact it will have on you. I am not saying that most chemicals are not safe to dispose of, but that one must know exactly what one is doing with every chemical, every time.

unionised - 11-12-2006 at 12:31

On a marginally more serious point than my last post here, Actually it's worse than that for example the Western world's polution way well lead to grave problems in low lying areas like Bangladesh before it's a major problem in the West.

Quince - 11-12-2006 at 12:50

Quote:
Originally posted by maozim
blah blah blah

Let me tell you something, you little shit: that's not a good first post to start with in this forum. Now, I suggest you crawl back into the putrid hole of that mongrel of a mother of yours!

Cheers,
Your pal, Quince

[Edited on 11-12-2006 by Quince]

Quince - 11-12-2006 at 12:51

Quote:
Originally posted by unionised
Bangladesh before it's a major problem in the West.

Exactly. Why me worry?

unionised - 11-12-2006 at 13:07

Because your next. BTW, is your previous post consistent with the site rules? If we don't have a rule forbidding gratuitous rudeness, perhaps we should.

[Edited on 11-12-2006 by unionised]

pantone159 - 11-12-2006 at 13:36

Quote:
Originally posted by Quince
Let me tell you something, you little shit: that's not a good first post to start with in this forum. Now, I suggest you crawl back into the putrid hole of that mongrel of a mother of yours!


That's not a good 775th (or whatever) post to continue with in this forum, either.

12AX7 - 11-12-2006 at 13:58

Methinks Quince forgot his meds over the last couple weeks.

vulture - 11-12-2006 at 15:14

And that concludes it. Meds or not, Quincy boy has been banned. Enough of this shit.

The rest of you, please carry on with the topic at hand.

[Edited on 11-12-2006 by vulture]

Elawr - 12-12-2006 at 06:39

Of course this is now no longer an issue, but I'm curious as to just what in the hell has gotten into old Quince of lately. I mean, here is someone who has been a long time contributor with 700+ posts who, it seems, was just begging to get himself banned. So WTF?

Anyways... back to the topic at hand.

I always keep some Quickcrete handy for those small quantities of inorganic nasties too toxic to flush. Portland cement is especially good for immobilizing transition metals. You can combine your waste with concrete and the proper amount of H20 in a plastic container, which can in turn be encapsulated with a larger casting of concrete. Should be stable for a long time. Shoot, you could then build yourself a wall out of encapsulated waste.

woelen - 12-12-2006 at 07:41

I have serious doubts whether that is a wise thing to do. In this way, you make kg quantities of gram quantities of waste. The waste is immobilized, but you still have it around.

I strive to make the volume of waste as small as possible, and bring it to the municipal waste processing facilities as photographic toner waste. Simple, not suspicious and low-volume.

unionised - 12-12-2006 at 11:09

Most inorganic nasties like mercury will always be around. Imobilising them means they won't do any harm.

My understanding is that the Netherlands has some of the best domestic waste recyling sytems going. It may be that no such scheme is available to Elawr.

roamingnome - 12-12-2006 at 12:00

yes after you incase your waste in cement take a long troll a few miles of the coast and drop them wise guys over board

ive seen milatary video of radioactive waste being dumped in the Marianas Trench, before they had to bury it in a mountain. i think the whales are suffering and washing ashore becuase of stuff like that.

Elawr - 12-12-2006 at 14:55

Your point is well-taken, Woelen. Portland based cements can be impervious and nearly immortal when properly cured and thus safe for long-term containment. However, intregrity of concretes are very sensitive to factors such as degree of hydration, curing temp, and type of admixtures. Also, certain cations will either enhance or degrade the strength of the composite.

Clearly, one needs good working knowledge of the complex chemistry of concrete and its interactions with whatever substance you intend to encapsulate. Otherwise you may have leakage later on.

I will try to locate a reference I have somewhere from an old catalog of Flynn Scientific Company (http://www.flinnsci.com). It is a set of guidelines and instructions for disposal of chemical wastes from school labs, including how to encapsulate certain things in concrete.

[Edited on 12-12-2006 by Elawr]

Maya - 12-12-2006 at 15:05

I thought cement was still relatively very porous and when it looses all of its hydration becomes very fragile???


That is why they usually tear down buildings that have undergone extreme fire.


But I guess compounds will still leach out pretty slowly.................................

Elawr - 12-12-2006 at 15:17

Properly made concrete actually gets stronger and stronger over the years due to continued curing processes. If allowed to dry out too soon concrete is weak because curing depends upon hydration reactions. THe longer it cures, the more tightly bound the H2O becomes so that after a time concrete resists drying out. Of course in a fire, the stuff will loose its water to the intense heat and be ruined.

pantone159 - 12-12-2006 at 21:33

I think one of the most important things is to make the nasties insoluble. E.g. precipitate mercuric sulfide. That, by itself, is a big step up from pouring it down the drain, even if you then just threw the HgS in the trash. Of course, real waste disposal is best.

You might have a city hazardous waste site that you don't know about - there is one, e.g., here in Austin that is free.

leu - 19-3-2007 at 18:31

The way that chemical wastes are encapsulated before being encased in concrete is usually by molten plastic :P Two more articles from the Journal of Chemical Education on disposing of chemical waste properly :cool:

[Edited on 20-3-2007 by leu]

Attachment: jce-chemwasdis.zip (164kB)
This file has been downloaded 658 times

guy - 19-3-2007 at 18:47

Inorganic wastes are easy enough to render almost harmless. Its the organic stuff Im not too sure about.

Baphomet - 19-3-2007 at 22:03

Pantone, I like the HgS idea.. it makes sense to dispose of mercury like that since that's the way it exists in nature.

Methinks it's a good rule of thumb for disposing of heavy metals in general. Combined with the cement idea it would surely minimise environmental impact.

Pyridinium - 20-3-2007 at 02:26

I missed this thread somehow. Never knew the guy who got banned, but if his behavior deteriorated over time, maybe he had chronic Hg toxicity or something. I'm half-serious. Heavy metal poisoning can cause aggression.

On the subject at hand, here's an idea for inorganics. It's going to be part of an article I've been working on, though I have no set date of when that will be finished.

Look up the Ksp of various "insoluble" compounds formed with the toxic ion and something else. Find the one with the lowest Ksp, and that's the one you want to make, via precipitation. In the case of lead, I think galena (PbS) is the lowest, or one of the lowest.

For fluorides, make fluorite (CaF2). For mercury, make cinnabar.

For Cr(VI), it's possible to evaporate solution and then roast it down to chrome green (insoluble, ceramic pigment. If there is a lot of H2SO4, distill off the SO3 is possible, but we all know how dangerous that can be).

If you have lead wastes and chromate wastes, make lead chromate (crocoite).

For organics, Fenton's reagent. Just be careful w/ it.

As much as environmentalists have gone overboard, I can't believe anyone would be fool enough to pour mercury down a sink. Yeah, I know. They already did. It's happened a bunch of times.

Nixie - 20-3-2007 at 15:54

I've been tested for about everything while trying to find out why I'm not putting on weight, so if there were heavy metal toxicity, I'd know about it.

Magpie - 20-3-2007 at 18:21

Here's how not to do waste disposal of ether, taken from another forum :o :

"How Not to Do It: More Diethyl Ether (Now With Extra Hardware)

Man, have things changed since I was in grad school. We used to pour all kinds of horrible things down the drain - mind you, this was a good twenty years ago. But you can't do that now, can you?

A respected University of Washington pharmacology professor became a felon Wednesday when he acknowledged dumping a flammable substance down a laboratory sink and then trying to conceal his actions.

Daniel Storm, 62, pleaded guilty in federal court to violating the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act by flushing about four liters of the solvent ethyl ether. He faces a maximum five years in prison and a $250,000 fine when sentenced June 18, although prosecutors have recommended probation under the terms of a plea agreement.

Well, everywhere I've worked, the safety officers have tried to put the fear of RCRA ("rick-rah") into us, and by gosh, it looks like they may have had a point. Turns out that Prof. Storm's lab had several elderly containers of ether which turned up in a lab inspection, and he decided to get out of paying the $15,000 hazardous waste disposal bill. So he decided to take matters into his own hands.

And how: he went after the metal ether cans with an ax, which means that he was lucky not to blow himself up. (A stray spark from the metal could have done the trick, and who knows how much peroxide was in the stuff, for that matter). Why the Monty Python lumberjack routine? Well, the lids were too tight, and according to Prof. Strong, the ax just happened to be handy. (How many times have the police heard that old excuse, eh?) Yep, you can't pour ether down the sink like we used to, and you can't chop open the stuff with an ax like we. . .well, actually, we never used to do that. No one ever has, most likely.

What really ripped it was when he went on to fake paperwork from a nonexistant waste disposal company to make it look as if the ether had been properly hauled away. No, if you haven't clicked on that link yet, you'll have to take my word that I'm not making this up as I go along. But you get the impression that Professor Strong sure was. Makes you wonder if he had been exposed to too many fumes. A spokeswoman for the school says that she's unware of any similar incidents there, and I'll bet she's telling the truth. No, I've seen some stupid things done with diethyl ether, but this one threatens to retire the trophy."

Nixie - 20-3-2007 at 18:23

I've poured liters of spent nitrating solutions down the drain over the couple of years I've been into this stuff. I'd love to see who's going to stop me.

Other goodies I've poured down the sink: nitroglycerin, mercury, hydrazine, lots of lead acetate, more nitrates than I've used to fertilize the lawn, a liter of concentrated chlorothalonil, and my favorite, abrin.

This is a case where the law is wrong. Even if there were ten times the hobbyists and experimenters dumping chemicals into the drains, it wouldn't amount to anything compared to, say, industrial sources.

[Edited on 20-3-2007 by Nixie]

Pyridinium - 21-3-2007 at 01:14

Quote:
Originally posted by Magpie
Turns out that Prof. Storm's lab had several elderly containers of ether which turned up in a lab inspection, and he decided to get out of paying the $15,000 hazardous waste disposal bill.


$15,000? How much ether was this?? You can't tell me this was for a mere 4L of ether. Peroxides or not, that's ridiculous.

[Edited on 21-3-2007 by Pyridinium]

woelen - 21-3-2007 at 02:51

Quote:
Originally posted by Nixie
This is a case where the law is wrong. Even if there were ten times the hobbyists and experimenters dumping chemicals into the drains, it wouldn't amount to anything compared to, say, industrial sources.

[Edited on 20-3-2007 by Nixie]

The fact that large industries produce lots of waste and may dump some of it, is no excuse for you to act in a similar way.

This is like saying that Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot had killed millions of people on their behalf, so it is not a problem if I have one or two people killed. Does this sound absurd to you? Probably yes. Well, the same applies to how one should act with chemical waste.

Nixie - 21-3-2007 at 02:54

You lose by Godwin's Law. You just had to bring in the Hitler reference, didn't you...

Besides, what I dump has insignificant impact. I'd even say that the impact of industrial dumping is negligible and a worthy expense of sustained progress. Environmentalists are Luddites on the inside.

[Edited on 21-3-2007 by Nixie]

Pyridinium - 21-3-2007 at 09:13

Quote:
Originally posted by Nixie
Besides, what I dump has insignificant impact. I'd even say that the impact of industrial dumping is negligible and a worthy expense of sustained progress. Environmentalists are Luddites on the inside.
[Edited on 21-3-2007 by Nixie]


Environmentalists are a little overboard, yes, but mercury? First of all, why waste it like that. Second, bacteria can and do convert it to dimethylmercury, which is pretty gnarly stuff even in trace amounts. Somewhere that gets into someone's groundwater, perhaps. And if it does, the impact might be a little significant. Among other things, let's just say that doesn't reflect well on the amateur science community.
I'm not trying to flame you, but Hg doesn't belong down the sink.

Magpie - 21-3-2007 at 14:36

Pyridinium says:
Quote:

$15,000? How much ether was this?? You can't tell me this was for a mere 4L of ether. Peroxides or not, that's ridiculous.


You are right, of course. In my opinion that's why Professor Storm did such a stupid thing. I.e., he was so incensed by the idea of paying someone $15,000 to dispose of 4L of ether that he went temporarily berserk.

PlatinumCal99 - 13-8-2007 at 06:55

I have a liter of THF that I won't be using for at least the next 4 months and I want to get rid of it. Can I just set it on fire and dispose of it that way? (In a large, open field, of course)

[Edited on 13-8-2007 by PlatinumCal99]

Eclectic - 13-8-2007 at 07:28

You could pour it in to your gas tank with at least 5-10 gallons of gas...

PlatinumCal99 - 13-8-2007 at 07:33

lol, can't really do that, "my" car is really my dads :(

12AX7 - 13-8-2007 at 17:45

What's the octane rating on that anyway?

Would the stabilizer(s) be affected by the new environment at all?

Being an oxygenated hydrocarbon, it's probably "good for the environment" when burned, much as MTBE, ethanol and etc. are claimed to be.

Tim

BromicAcid - 13-8-2007 at 18:12

Most flammable liquid waste, even stuff that I wouldn't consider waste (like your THF) goes off to the cement kiln for incineration. Burning in an open field doesn't do the best of jobs since it will absorb into the ground, incompletely combust, etc, however it's notably better than pouring it down the drain. Any chemical method of destruction is going to consume vast quantities of chemicals.