Neutralizing pickle

I am glad that Agnes brought up the issue of Toulene. It is very
very dangerous and should be avoided at all costs. As she says, itis
absorbed though the skin and does cause cancer. One of the causes of
one of the blood cancers, myelodysplasia, has been identified as
benzene, which thankfully has been banned in the USA. Possibly
Toulene is also one of the causes. I believe it is used as a lacquer
thinner, and still available. If so, it should be banned.

Pay heed to what Agnes says.

Alma

In Chile they use copper on the counters at immigration to kill
germs. so their agents do not get sick. While processing people
coming into the country…

Unless you are doing BIG AMOUNTS OF JEWELRY. YOU WILL NOT KILL ANYONE
OR ANYTHING !! With your little amount of pickle. After it is treated
and disposed if needed. Bottle line too much oxygen will kill you.
Too much waterwill kill you. Not enough copper in your diet will kill
you. Etc… Try yo keep everything into balance. Including this
thread… I do teach my students about proper techniques of disposal
but I also keep it into the prospective of how much is being
disposed… Once I was asked to make some alloyed rods of silver and
copper for a start up company who wanted to make a product that
replaced swimming pool chemicals. They made millions. I did not. but
they are still in business today using silver and copper ions to
purify the water in swimming pools and hot tubs…

Small amounts help large amounts do not. Bottom line. end of
discussion as far as I am concerned…

I figure that my car causes Moyer damage to the environment in a
couple of years then I have done in my lifetime making jewelry. that
said you do need yo know what toy are working with and how to safely
dispose of it. Yes a little will not do much harm bur times a
100,000 of us it does add up. so every bit helps our children and
grand children to live healthier lives. If we teach them not to eat
fast food stuff first…:slight_smile:

Wow Agnes thanks for the entertaining education!

Your thoughts and concerns are enlightening.

Cheers, Taf

Silver is a more potent bactericide than copper, and while it’s
toxicity to mammals is slight, it’s very toxic to fish. My sewer
eventually empties into a river; I’d rather not dump silver into it.
That being said, there isn’t all that much silver or copper in spent
pickle.

Seems to me that pouring spent pickle onto the ground, driveways,
plants, etc., allows it to seep into the groundwater and aquifers.
Since my well water comes from those aquifers... 

When you finish a jar of dill pickles, how to you neutralize the
brine? I just tested the pH on my pickle and on some brine. The
pickle was 2 and the brine 3.

But if you still want to Save The Earth you could find a forest of
hardwoods that has burned down in the past and pour your pickle and
brine on the land there since the soil under such a forest fire
would be very basic.

Paf Dvorak

Hi all

no need to worry so much about spent pickle. What is a real worry is
what Thomas Midgley Junior did.

he introduced petrol containing tetraethyl lead, to stop engine
knock. Lead does not go away. And much of the world is covered in it.

That said he also pioneered the use of Chlorofluorocarbons. That did
not have a good effect on the ozone layer.

all the best
Richard

That being said, there isn't all that much silver or copper in
spent pickle. 

Think about the root acid behind pickle. What we normally use,
sodium bisulphate, is a sulphuric acid salt, and it’s behavior will
be similar to sulphuric acid. Just experience, if you’ve ever done
etching, would tell you that sulphuric acid will etch/dissolve
copper. Experience with pickle, if you look at your copper pickle
tongs, will confirm that while they hold up fairly well, they’re not
immune. And sulphuric acid is the basic material behind copper based
plating solutions. We use the pickle primarily to remove the
[normally black] copper oxides formed on silver or other metals we
use after heating. If it dissolves those oxides, then it’s putting
copper into solution. Spent pickle is often fairly blue in color.
That’s copper. So the amount of copper in spent pickle, in grams per
quart, may be low, but there’s actually a fair amount there just as a
concentration of copper sulphate.

Now silver in the pickle is something else. Try etching silver with
sulphuric acid. Doesn’t work. And while copper easily forms several
stable oxides, silver by and large, doesn’t. Silver oxide just isn’t
a major player for us. It exists, sure, but when you heat fine
silver, a bunch of silver oxide just isn’t part of the problem.
Sulphides, yes, Oxides, no (and pickle doesn’t take off the black
sulphides, so they’re not a factor).

Bottom line, spent pickle CAN have significant amounts of copper in
it. Can also have other metals, like iron or zinc, if you’re putting
things in the pickle that have those. But it won’t have significant
or any amounts of dissolve silver. The copper can indeed be an
environmental problem. The silver isn’t. Besides, given the fact that
silver is expensive, and we don’t want to be tossing silver out, if
pickle dissolved silver, we’d use something else…

Peter

sodium bisulphate, is a sulphuric acid salt, and it's behavior
will be similar to sulphuric acid. 

That doesn’t really follow. Think of HCl and NaCl.

Al Balmer

sodium bisulphate, is a sulphuric acid salt, and it's behavior
will be similar to sulphuric acid. That doesn't really follow.
Think of HCl and NaCl. 

The comparison is not quite accurate NaCl dissociates in water to Na+
and Cl- whereas sodium bisulfate is NaHSO4 dissociates into Na+ H+
and SO4–.

It s the presence of the H+ ions that make the solution acidic but
not as acidic as H2SO4 that dissociates into 2H+ and SO4–.

BTW I use sulfuric acid as a pickle, one part battery acid to 3
parts water.

I make up about 500ml at a time and usually lasts about 6 months. I
keep my pickle in a lidded glass jar keps inside a larger plastic
container. I don’t bother heating my pickle since it works fine cold.
Socium bisulfate is not generally used here in swimming pools because
they mostly use salt water chlorination and hydrochloric acid to
bring down the pH. It is easy to get battery acid from any auto
electrician. Remember to dilute by adding the acid to water.

All the best
Jen

sodium bisulphate, is a sulphuric acid salt, and it's behavior will
be similar to sulphuric acid. 
That doesn't really follow. Think of HCl and NaCl. 

From Wikipedia:

“Sodium bisulfate, … is the sodium salt of the bisulfate anion,
with the molecular formula NaHSO4. Sodium bisulfate is an acid salt
formed by partial neutralization of sulfuric acid by an equivalent of
sodium, … Solutions of sodium bisulfate are acidic, with a 1M
solution having a pH of < 1.”

The ph-neutral salt would be sodium sulphate, Na2SO4, where the
remaining H has also been replaced by a second sodium ion. Solutions
of this have a neutral ph of 7.

Sulphuric acid, H2SO4 is the starting acid. neutralize (replace)
one of the hydrogen ions, and you get pickle, a tamed-down, safer,
and gentler way to use the chemistry of sulphuric acid. But it’s
still considered a salt. Just not a neutral one. Neutralize
(replace) both H ions, and now you’ve got another salt of sulphuric
acid that’s useful in some detergents, used in paper manufacturing,
and more. But it isn’t an acid or a pickle any more…

hope that helps
PWR

I have a jar of sulfuric acid pickle at work; it doesn’t need heat
and it’s fast.

However I prefer bisulfate at home and for teaching, it’s safer.

Karen