safe disposal of chemicals

In article ,
(Rex B) wrote:

On Wed, 07 Jul 2004 01:38:29 GMT, (lisau) wrote:

||Hi. I just bought a house in the woods. The garage is a separate
||building, and I intend to set up a small metalworking shop to augment
||my woodworking -- I just graduated from school where I fell in love
||with metalsmithing while being a furniture major ... I especially love
||making small vessels & objects. The main problem is that there's no
||running water in the space, and no drainage pipes leading to my septic
||tank.
||Without spending a lot of $$, I figure I can set up a sink and feed it
||with a gardening hose -- I can do this easily right outside the
||garage's back door.

Look into rainwater catchment.
A standard gutter, leading to a tank, feeding the sink. Filters as needed.
Unless you are in a desert, you can get all the water you need from the sky,

Heh...
So speaks someone whose words make it quite obvious that he's never been
in northern California for anything more than a short visit. Basically,
starting sometime in about April or May, and running through about
October or November, it essentially doesn't rain. Basically nothing but
the *VERY* occasional "storm" that dumps just about enough water to put
dots in the dust on the windshield, and maybe make the little "petrified
splash" marks in the dust of the driveway. Of course, that leaves the
"wet season", when nobody around these parts is likely to argue with the
statement that it rains buckets three days out of seven, and for most of
the rest, it drizzles pretty much constantly, for weeks on end. Sure,
there's plenty of water then, no question. But unless you're ready,
willing, and able to create a pond or small lake, it's just not
practical to store enough water to last from the final rain of one wet
season to the first rain of the next.

We're not REALLY a desert - It just seems that way during dry season.

--
Don Bruder - - New Email policy in effect as of Feb. 21, 2004.
I respond to Email as quick as humanly possible. If you Email me and get no
response, see http://www.sonic.net/~dakidd/main/contact.html Short
form: I'm trashing EVERYTHING that doesn't contain a password in the subject.

"Dan Caster" wrote in message
...
I don't think that neutralizing with baking soda is going to be of any
real help. Silver compounds kill bacteria. Copper sulphate is a
poison. And I think nickle is also one of the " bad " metals too. So
neutralizing the acid isn't going to help much if any.

Someone please step in here. I think Clorox will turn the silver into
silver chloride which if I remember correctly will precipatate and can
be filtered out probably with paper towels. Someone here will surely
correct me and come up with the best solution.


Chlorox will turn AgNO3 into AgCl but Ag is only sparingly soluble in H2SO4
so there won't be much Silver at all in the used pickle. A good flocculant
for pickle solution is the Alum you find on the grocers shelf. Pickle
solution that has become slow to remove CuO from heated Sterling can be
"revived" by placing a clean strip of Sterling into it along with another
clean (degreased and rust free) strip of steel. The dissolved Cu will plate
out onto the strip of Sterling. (Which, by the way, is why you never use
Iron or Steel tools in the pickle pot.) After the Cu is removed add slowly,
while stirring, 1 tablespoon of Alum to each quart of pickle solution. Let
stand and cool and the Alum will have caused most of the small particles
suspended in the solution to agglomerate and settle to the bottom of the
container where they will stay as you pour off the solution itself. Then add
either Marble chips or Limestone chips to the solution to neutralize the
remaining acidity. An excess of either will not harm the "environment"
except aesthetically ane not even then if you use them as garden soil
ammendment.

--

Don Thompson

~~~~~~~~


You really want to turn the metals into something you can filter out
and dispose of as a solid.

Dan



(lisau) wrote in message

The chemicals I use are silver, copper & nickel pickles, acid etching
chems, patinas, and sometimes photography chemicals.



Meanwhile, does anyone out there have similar circumstances? How do
you deal with it? Does anyone know for sure the relative toxicity of
the chems, and if neutralizing them with baking soda is enough to make
it safe for a greywater system? I read on a previous thread about a
woman who uses Spa Up (spa/pool chemical) instead of pickle -- is it
really safer? Does it work for all metals? As with my woodworking, I
want my metalworking to be as "green" as possible.

Any comments on this issue would be appreciated!
Thanks!
lisau

Don Bruder wrote:

In article ,
(Rex B) wrote:


On Wed, 07 Jul 2004 01:38:29 GMT, (lisau) wrote:

||Hi. I just bought a house in the woods. The garage is a separate
||building, and I intend to set up a small metalworking shop to augment
||my woodworking -- I just graduated from school where I fell in love
||with metalsmithing while being a furniture major ... I especially love
||making small vessels & objects. The main problem is that there's no
||running water in the space, and no drainage pipes leading to my septic
||tank.
||Without spending a lot of $$, I figure I can set up a sink and feed it
||with a gardening hose -- I can do this easily right outside the
||garage's back door.

Look into rainwater catchment.
A standard gutter, leading to a tank, feeding the sink. Filters as needed.
Unless you are in a desert, you can get all the water you need from the sky,


Heh...
So speaks someone whose words make it quite obvious that he's never been
in northern California for anything more than a short visit. Basically,
starting sometime in about April or May, and running through about
October or November, it essentially doesn't rain. Basically nothing but
the *VERY* occasional "storm" that dumps just about enough water to put
dots in the dust on the windshield, and maybe make the little "petrified
splash" marks in the dust of the driveway. Of course, that leaves the
"wet season", when nobody around these parts is likely to argue with the
statement that it rains buckets three days out of seven, and for most of
the rest, it drizzles pretty much constantly, for weeks on end. Sure,
there's plenty of water then, no question. But unless you're ready,
willing, and able to create a pond or small lake, it's just not
practical to store enough water to last from the final rain of one wet
season to the first rain of the next.

We're not REALLY a desert - It just seems that way during dry season.

Yup. The mountain snowpack is everything.

(lisau) wrote in message
. ..
Hi. I just bought a house in the woods. The garage is a separate
building, and I intend to set up a small metalworking shop to augment
my woodworking -- I just graduated from school where I fell in love
with metalsmithing while being a furniture major ... I especially love
making small vessels & objects. The main problem is that there's no
running water in the space, and no drainage pipes leading to my septic
tank.

The chemicals I use are silver, copper & nickel pickles, acid etching
chems, patinas, and sometimes photography chemicals.


Silver, copper and nickel are easily stripped out of the wastewater by
use of ionic resins. Depending on how much water you plan on using,
it won't be too expensive to set up. The resin beds will have to be
regenerated by a commercial firm to strip the accumulated metals out
for disposal, but this doesn't have to be done too often depending on
the concentrations in your waste stream. The water that has been
pushed through the resin beds is clean enough of the metals to be
disposed of in the spetic system.

Acids can be neutralized with various common items and then have the
ph adjusted and then pumped to the resin beds to strip out the metals.

The quickest way to get all the info that you will need is to visit a
plating shop in the area that does MilSpec work and talk with their
waste treatment people.

It's worth the time and effort to do it right from the begining.
Having designed and built these type treatment systems commercially a
few years ago, I do still have a few contacts in the industry if you
need them.

Craig C.

Wow, thanks everyone for the info!

We're on a community water supply here, not quite independent ... but
I'm actually not sure where the water originates. We do have
neighbors down the hill, as well as many mature redwoods, so I agree
that letting the used water leach down the hillside isn't an option.
When I mentioned a second septic, I guess I was envisioning one that
could be pumped out rather than filter through a leaching field like
our current one does. I'm specifically thinking of a friend of mine
who lives on a creek and has his septic drained every few months
because he does a lot a ceramic work and lets dust go down the drain.
This probably isn't worth the expense for my situation.

I guess the best thing is to let the water evaporate and then dispose
of the solids, though we have to be mindful of standing water --
mosquitoes, West Nile virus, etc. Maybe it can be boiled down
(outside) to hasten the process (I think I'm going to set up my
soldering station outside under a shed roof anyway). But it sounds
like the consensus here is that while etching & photo chemicals &
pickle should be disposed of separately, the water used to wash off
pickle could possibly be filtered in some way, or evaporated into a
solid. I guess its actually good that I don't have running water in
my studio because I would have to build some kind of by-pass on the
sink anyway.

Its funny because in school no one even talked about this ...
everything went right down the drain!! In the furniture department
there was a bit more interest in using "green" materials and
processes, but not in the metal department. This should really be
changed. (BTW did anyone read that depressing article in Metalsmith
about strip mining processes? It gives new meaning to the term
"precious metal")

Also, thanks for the tip about using rainwater. I was going to set up
some barrels eventually, but had planned on using the H2O for
gardening. But you're right, our water here is actually very
corrosive, and we have to have all copper pipes. I hadn't really
though about the effects on the metal I work with.

Again, thanks so much for all the input. I'll let you know what I end
up doing! Also, I'm glad to have found this board. SNAG is the one
organization touted at our school, but I find their lack of support to
the community to be really annoying ... by this I mean no posting of
events, shows, etc in the magazine, and no discussion boards or means
of communication through their website.

Cheers!
Lisa U

In article ,
Jim Stewart wrote:

Don Bruder wrote:

In article ,
(Rex B) wrote:


On Wed, 07 Jul 2004 01:38:29 GMT, (lisau) wrote:

||Hi. I just bought a house in the woods. The garage is a separate
||building, and I intend to set up a small metalworking shop to augment
||my woodworking -- I just graduated from school where I fell in love
||with metalsmithing while being a furniture major ... I especially love
||making small vessels & objects. The main problem is that there's no
||running water in the space, and no drainage pipes leading to my septic
||tank.
||Without spending a lot of $$, I figure I can set up a sink and feed it
||with a gardening hose -- I can do this easily right outside the
||garage's back door.

Look into rainwater catchment.
A standard gutter, leading to a tank, feeding the sink. Filters as needed.
Unless you are in a desert, you can get all the water you need from the
sky,


Heh...
So speaks someone whose words make it quite obvious that he's never been
in northern California for anything more than a short visit. Basically,
starting sometime in about April or May, and running through about
October or November, it essentially doesn't rain. Basically nothing but
the *VERY* occasional "storm" that dumps just about enough water to put
dots in the dust on the windshield, and maybe make the little "petrified
splash" marks in the dust of the driveway. Of course, that leaves the
"wet season", when nobody around these parts is likely to argue with the
statement that it rains buckets three days out of seven, and for most of
the rest, it drizzles pretty much constantly, for weeks on end. Sure,
there's plenty of water then, no question. But unless you're ready,
willing, and able to create a pond or small lake, it's just not
practical to store enough water to last from the final rain of one wet
season to the first rain of the next.

We're not REALLY a desert - It just seems that way during dry season.

Yup. The mountain snowpack is everything.

You got that right... Snowpack's down? California's screwed. Especially
southern cali, since so much of the snowpack is routed into the canals
to feed the "Greater" L.A. desert.

--
Don Bruder - - New Email policy in effect as of Feb. 21, 2004.
Short form: I'm trashing EVERY E-mail that doesn't contain a password in the
subject unless it comes from a "whitelisted" (pre-approved by me) address.
See http://www.sonic.net/~dakidd/main/contact.html for full details.

I live in Ohio, and we have a Ashland Chemical who has a
HazMat turn in day every so often. They take everything, I have seen
people turn in lab grade acids, old paints and a bunch of stuff that I
would not keep in my home.

Jerry

In article , "Don T"
wrote:
Chlorox will turn AgNO3 into AgCl but Ag is only sparingly soluble in
H2SO4


Is'nt Chlorox a compound which liberates chlorine gas on contact with acid?
Chlorine is dangerous! Not only will it damage lungs, it will rust anything
in its neighnourhood that is rustable.
I would use common salt to precipitate silver from a solution. To shift
copper and nickel I would use washing soda, sodium carbonate, but the liquor
you get after filtering the precipitated metal hydroxides and carbonates
off in paper towels will still contain more of these metals than can make it
drinkable, especially so if the starting liquor contains any ammonia.

G.H.Ireland

--
igor
_____________________________________________
Acorn RISC OS4
_____________________________________________

On Sat, 10 Jul 2004 01:45:33 GMT, Mr G H Ireland
wrote:


Is'nt Chlorox a compound which liberates chlorine gas on contact with acid?
Chlorine is dangerous!

Yes and? One will note that such things are often found under your
kitchen sink. Never mix chlorine bleach with cleaning ammonia, unless
you have your NBC mask on. This does however work fairly well if you
have a mouse or roach problem and you go on vacation for a couple of
days......

This is NOT recommended if you live in an apartment or condo.....

Gunner

That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's
cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays
there.
- George Orwell

"Mr G H Ireland" wrote in message
...
In article , "Don T"
wrote:
Chlorox will turn AgNO3 into AgCl but Ag is only sparingly soluble in
H2SO4


Is'nt Chlorox a compound which liberates chlorine gas on contact with
acid?
Chlorine is dangerous! Not only will it damage lungs, it will rust
anything
in its neighnourhood that is rustable.
I would use common salt to precipitate silver from a solution.

Perhaps you will go back and read the post to which I responded? You are
right about Chlorox but that is irrelevant to the person's post. A standard
solution made with -*plain*- NaCl, NOT Iodized NaCl, is a useful lab
reagant to determine the Silver content of a HNO3 solution. Rough and ready
when you know there is Ag but don't care how much is to add HCl or Chlorox
(NaOCl, Sodium Hypochlorite) slowly until the addition ceases to produce the
curdy AgCl precipitate. Solution chemistry is such that the liberated Cl gas
goes to break the -NO3 away from the Ag and attach itself in place. It is
only when you have an extreme excess that the Cl gas escapes into the
atmosphere and causes trouble.



--

Don Thompson

~~~~~~~~


To shift
copper and nickel I would use washing soda, sodium carbonate, but the
liquor
you get after filtering the precipitated metal hydroxides and carbonates
off in paper towels will still contain more of these metals than can make
it
drinkable, especially so if the starting liquor contains any ammonia.

G.H.Ireland

--
igor
_____________________________________________
Acorn RISC OS4
_____________________________________________