I have a question about this subject, what about evaporation?
For instance, On our farm we have a drying box that is no longer
used. It is a metal box with holes about the size of you finger
drilled in it. It sets on the top of the chicken coop (now
empty). It would not be a problem to put a pad lock on this box.
Could one safely put the acid or solutions in a glass container
into the box and simply let it evaporate? …Char
what about evaporation? For instance, On our farm we have a drying box It is a metal box with holes about the size of you finger drilled in it. It would not be a problem to put a pad lock on this box. Could one safely put the acid or solutions in a glass container into the box and simply let it evaporate? .........Char
G’day; Yes you could of course. And it would eventually
evaporate. After a while. But it wouldn’t be much trouble to
neutralize those acids first with plenty of baking soda. Pour
them over some absorbent medium - sawdust, shavings or even so
much baking powder you finish up with a solid, then put them in
your box where they would evaporate quickly; the medium provides
a larger surface area for quicker drying. But the metal box
would quickly rust if is wasn’t lined - at least on the bottom -
with polythene; such as old supermarket bags.
In laboratories I where I was in charge of safety, we had 3 kilo
wide mouthed jars full of baking soda on every student bench, .
(sodium bicarbonate, which we bought in 50 kilo sacks really
cheaply) Students and staff were encouraged to empty a jar over
bad acid spills. Often the bottles contained up to 2.5 litres
of concentrated acids - just imagine the mess! And potential
hazards in cleaning it up! But after the reactions with the
bicarbonate ceased, the solid was simply swept up and put in the
lab waste boxes. The stuff was then harmless. Cheers. –
/\
/ /
/ / Johnb@ts.co.nz
/ /__|\
(_______) In sunny temperate Mapua NZ -
Autumn’s here
I visited a commeercial industrial plater in the California bay
area that had a small heated tank that recieve4d all spent
plating solutions. They used the heated tank to evaporate all the
water resultigg in a very small volume of solid material for
eventual solid waste disposal. The system had been in use for
several years, I understood with not enough material collected to
begin to finally dispose of. This is system was approver by
California authorities and the EPA. XCyanide solutions would need
appropriate destruction of any cyanide before treated this way.
Jesse
Sorry to butt in here. If this is the whole story about the
disposal method, it would not meet federal or state regulations
in any state in the US. With “heavy metal” wastes, some
additional treatment would be required before evaporation such as
lime treatment to stabilize the metals in a less mobile form.
Even after lime treatment, such a sludge would probably not be
permitted in a normal city dump. As mentioned, additional
treatment would be required for cyanide wastes.
Please respond off line if there is any major discussion.
Problems with waste disposal has driven many small platers out of
business.
TOM (OWL1)