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vulture
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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]
One shouldn't accept or resort to the mutilation of science to appease the mentally impaired.
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Elawr
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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.
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woelen
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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.
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unionised
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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.
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roamingnome
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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.
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Elawr
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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]
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Maya
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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.................................
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Elawr
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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.
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pantone159
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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.
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leu
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The way that chemical wastes are encapsulated before being encased in concrete is usually by molten plastic  Two more articles from the Journal of Chemical Education on disposing of chemical waste properly 
[Edited on 20-3-2007 by leu]
Attachment: jce-chemwasdis.zip (164kB)
This file has been downloaded 573 times
Chemistry is our Covalent Bond
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guy
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Inorganic wastes are easy enough to render almost harmless. Its the organic stuff Im not too sure about.
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Baphomet
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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.
\"Who ARE you? You\'re like the drummer from REO Speedwagon - nobody knows who you are\" from \'Employee of the Month\'
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Pyridinium
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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.
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Nixie
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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.
\"Good is a product of the ethical and spiritual artistry of individuals; it cannot be mass-produced.\" --Aldous Huxley
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Magpie
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Here's how not to do waste disposal of ether, taken from another forum  :
"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."
The single most important condition for a successful synthesis is good mixing - Nicodem
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Nixie
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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]
\"Good is a product of the ethical and spiritual artistry of individuals; it cannot be mass-produced.\" --Aldous Huxley
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Pyridinium
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| 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]
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woelen
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| 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.
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Nixie
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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]
\"Good is a product of the ethical and spiritual artistry of individuals; it cannot be mass-produced.\" --Aldous Huxley
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Pyridinium
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| 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.
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Magpie
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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.
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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.
The single most important condition for a successful synthesis is good mixing - Nicodem
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PlatinumCal99
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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]
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Eclectic
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You could pour it in to your gas tank with at least 5-10 gallons of gas...
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PlatinumCal99
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lol, can't really do that, "my" car is really my dads 
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12AX7
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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
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