Dealing with Waste

[butcher]

Iron in differing oxidation states can give solutions color, iron oxidizes to ferric (iron ions missing 3 electrons) Fe+3, and ferrous (iron ions missing 2 electrons) as you raise pH you can change the oxidation state of the iron ions or compounds ...


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron(III)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron(III)_chloridehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron(III)_sulfate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferroushttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron(II)_chloridehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron(II)_sulfate
Depending on the acids used we can have different salts of iron ions such as chlorides or sulfates or so on, oxidized iron ions which are combined with the reduced ions of the acids we used to from these iron salts, the pH can change the different oxidation states of iron, such as chlorides, or sulfates or from the more acidic Fe III ions to the less acidic Fe II ions.

 

[MicheleM]

Thanks @butcher I thought that all the Fe was cemented using Aluminium but evidently not

 

[butcher]

See the reactivity series of metals, noting the place of hydrogen H+ or H3O (basically that which makes solution or ionic compounds acidic) and notice the place of aluminum (Al is above H+ or H+ is more reactive than Al), also noting the place of the other metals which are below hydrogen H+ in the reactivity series of metals, such as iron or copper which do not evolve hydrogen as gas in a chemical reaction, but instead reacts to form water H2O in the chemical reactions involved...

Aluminum will also consume acid (H3O) as it evolves the hydrogen gas in the reaction which will also affect the pH...

Aluminum is not the best way to displace iron salts from the solution, the waste becomes littered with problems of filtering and drying forming a gelatinous gunky mess aluminum hydroxides are very hygroscopic loving water and thus are hard to get dry or deal with.

Adding a base or basic solution (such as lime or NaOH...) and raising the pH itself will precipitate the iron salts (along with other metal oxides and hydroxides, which makes treating your waste easier to deal with, without having to deal with the water-loving goopy aluminum hydroxides...

Different metals precipitate at differing pH of the solution, thus we adjust the pH and decant metal salts at differing stages, and change the pH again to get other metals out of the solution decanting the solution and adjusting the pH again to bring it back to neutral pH and decanting again, where we have removed most of the more toxic metals giving us a more clear solution of mainly less toxic salts (such as sodium or potassium chlorides or sulfates...), depending on the salts we are dealing with, less toxic solutions that can easily be evaporated to dryness and be disposed of...

I also dry and heat the more toxic metal hydroxides to redness to convert them to less soluble oxides before disposal...

Note also metals can go into and out of solution or be in or out of solution at a wide range of pH anywhere from very acidic solution with a low pH to a high pH alkaline solution, some metals are amphoteric, they will dissolve in acid, and can be precipitated with raising the pH by adding a basic solution, adding more base can redissolve the metals back into the solution at a higher pH...

A study in dealing with waste will give you a much better understanding.

 

[MicheleM]

Thank you @butcher ,
yes, my plan was to precipitate the majority of base metals with a single more reactive metal , rise the pH at 7, 9 , 11 and then back at 7 try to filter at each stage (following the metal ion solubility chart). I used at first time Al because I missed this thread. From Reactivity series - Wikipedia I understood that Al would precipitate roughly all the other base metal but in the link are not shown all the different state of oxidation. Now I'm using Fe. Thank you very much again

 

[DJPGold]

I’ve just done 12 pages of reading and still didn’t quite find what I specifically would like to know.
I have a stock pot bucket that contains copper 2 chloride from treating RAM fingers, as well as the HCl and bleach solution and SMB used to dissolve and then drop the gold.
I plan to add some HCl used to dissolve tin from RAM sticks. I also have 100g or so of silver contacts from relays with copper on them and some pieces of brass and copper that have silver plating/pieces on them. Can these go straight in the stock pot to recover the silver later as it’s not worth enough for me to bother going for right now?
I would also like to chuck any copper based, non magnetic, gold plated crap in the stock pocket also to recover the metals much later on. Thanks for any response.

 

[Martijn]

You can use the HCL with tin as stannous chloride.
As far as i know, silver does not react with CuCl2.
Try it in a test tube with one contact point.

 

[Paul73]

Waste treatment for the small refiner.

Most of the practicing alchemists on this forum generate waste liquids which, if you have the time and desire, can be neutralized and made free of toxic metals rather simply. The required supplies are simply a pH meter, a few plastic tanks (15 gallon size is ideal), an aquarium air pump and some tubing, slab of copper, some scrap iron. The advantage you have in being a small producer is that you have the time to let the solutions sit and react before proceeding to the next step. Because of this you do not need expensive pH controllers or a filter press and the associated pumps.

The procedure that follows is for your acid waste only, it is not for cyanide or leaching type wastes, only the spent acids used to digest the metals you have refined.

Select a plastic tank to use as a holding tank for your spent acid, if it is translucent it makes it easy to see how full it is. This tank should have a lid to keep out rainwater and it should be kept where it will not freeze. What we will do in this tank is a process called cementation, whereby you hang a slab of copper metal in the waste acid to displace any precious metals which may still be in solution. When the tank is approaching full, maybe a few inches from the top, the copper is suspended in the tank and the solution is agitated to expose the copper to as much solution as possible. An easy and inexpensive trick is to buy an aquarium pump and some tubing and weigh the end of the hose down so it is close to the bottom of the tank and let it bubble away. Overnight should suffice. The copper bar will have displaced any PM’s in the solution which will settle to the bottom. Don’t expect a lot of material to settle from each load, but in time the material on the bottom is collected and refined for values. Allow the solution to settle after removing the bubbler and the copper bar, a few hours should do it. Now siphon the acid into another tank, being careful not to suck out any of the settled material. Usually a few inches of solution left on the bottom will prevent you from sucking out the solids and it is just left in the tank as you start to accumulate more waste acid.

A simple siphon device to prevent siphoning all the way to the bottom can be easily made as follows; cut a length of ½” CPVC pipe about 24” long, glue on a tee, followed by a 6” piece of pipe and a cap on the end. I prefer to use half inch “copper pipe sized” CPVC because it is nice and slim and easy to find tubing to slip over the end. Now you will need some flexible tubing to slip snugly over the end of the pipe opposite the capped end, about 4 or 5 feet will do. You will now have a hose and a short length of pipe which has an opening (because of the tee) 6” from the capped end. To start a siphon, place a finger over the hole in the tee and fill the entire hose and pipe with fresh water, then quickly submerge the capped end and place the end of the hose lower than the solution level in the tank. With this setup you don’t have to worry about sucking the solids off the bottom of the tank. One drawback is the tank you are siphoning from has to be higher than the tank you are siphoning to, so you’ll have to lift the full cementation tank on to a table to siphon it completely.

This second step can boil over if you’re not careful so I would transfer the liquid from the 15 gallon cementation tank into a 30 gallon tank if you’re going to process this all at once. Add your air bubbler to the 30 gallon tank and start bubbling. Check your pH, it should be close to zero when you start. Slowly add soda ash to the bubbling liquid, it will foam and generate CO2 so be careful not to boil it over, since an aquarium pump doesn’t move the liquid aggressively, add the soda ash slowly and stir with a pvc pipe occasionally to make sure it all is dissolving. Slowly over the course of a day or two raise the pH to 2.5.

Now you will add scrap iron to the tank, it can be done by placing the pieces of iron directly in the tank and fishing them out later, (needless to say with rubber gloves on) or you can get a plastic tank that fits into the 30 gallon tank, drill holes in it on the sides and bottom, and immerse the iron in all at once. The iron will displace copper and other metals from solution and slowly dissolve in the liquid. The iron will get coated up and a good shaking will remove the coating from the iron. After a few hours, the solution will have a green tea look to it which is ferric chloride. If you leave the iron in longer it will continue to dissolve so remove it and rinse it well. The copper and other metals will accumulate on the bottom of the 30 gallon tank where they are from time to time collected and dried.

You now use the siphon device to siphon the liquid to a final tank. Your primary contaminant now is iron. You can raise the pH with sodium hydroxide and the iron will drop out of solution which is quite easy to recognize. Unfortunately this liquid is a bit gel like and doesn’t filter well. A better way is to raise the pH with Magnesium hydroxide, the resultant sludge settles better and dries nicely. You cannot measure the pH of the reaction while adding magnesium hydroxide because it is slow to change the pH and you will over add, just go slowly and when you get the color change you’ll know the iron has dropped out. Let the iron settle and you can siphon off the now clear liquid to discard.

Great post, important information. As far as being a small producer, that I surely am, I am a curious experimenter that is very cautious with the varying reactions I am encountering. I do not have a fume hood and all experimentation is being done outside in the open air. I live in a rural area and all my wastes after being neutralized will be dumped into a 1000 gallon concrete holding tank that that contains my sewer waste and all my my sink and bath/shower wash waters. This container will be pumped out for disposal every couple of years therefore, whatever I dump into this tank will be greatly diluted. As far as container sizes, I am working with pint size and smaller jars, so I believe that I will be using 5 gallon plastic containers of which I have quite a few for the neutralization process. I have not gotten to that point yet as I am still deciding what metals to attempt to recover by the various processes I am experimenting with. I so far have refined about 1/2 gram of approximately 12K gold. I have separated quite a bit of what I believe is K copper from various boards I am depopulating and then dismantling after burning. I have some other containers that have stuff in them I am trying to identify. I had the bulk of this stuff up for auction and thought I had a buyer who stated he was interested in it for metal recovery but the buyer never completed the offer and that got me interested in the phrase (metal recovery). Hokes article is very interesting reading and I sincerely hope her comments will help me identify some of the material, I also will be posting some pictures (if I can get my camera to work satisfactorily) on this site in hopes someone will take the time to look at them and help me identify the materials they contain. And the reading and learning goes on and on (learning never ends for me).

 

[FrugalRefiner]

I live in a rural area and all my wastes after being neutralized will be dumped into a 1000 gallon concrete holding tank that that contains my sewer waste and all my my sink and bath/shower wash waters. This container will be pumped out for disposal every couple of years therefore, whatever I dump into this tank will be greatly diluted.

That is a terrible idea! It's like saying "I rinse my wastes down my drain but I run a lot of water after it, so it's greatly diluted". One of the dangerous parts about our waste solutions is that there are numerous metals dissolved in them. They are poisonous! They're not just going to settle out to the bottom of your tank. They will pass through it to your leach field and end up in the ground water, run off into the streams, and poison everything they touch.

What do you think happens to that waste after your septage hauler pumps it out of your tank? Your hauler will take it to a sewage treatment facility, where they will pump it out into the facility's system. There, it can poison the beneficial bacteria used in those facilities, resulting in a huge cost for the facility. If they trace it back to you, you'll be paying the bill.

If it was as easy as simply diluting it and having it treated by the local sewage treatment plant, we would all do it. It's not. You need to follow the instructions you've just read and treat your waste responsibly.

Dave

 

[Paul73]

I am still working on recovering the metals that are dissolved in my solutions. My plan is to recover all the different metals as much possible prior to any dumping taking place, currently the allure of gold has my attention but I will be learning to test for the other metals involved and pursuing their recovery. At the current time I have retained less than a gallon the solutions I have made and at the small scale I am dealing with do not expect to have more than a couple gallons of (spent) solutions to deal with. I am still studying Hokes manuscript and I am looking forward to finding out the proper way to get rid of the spent liquids. So far nothing has been put down the drain. Do you have any suggestions for getting rid of them "properly" once I am done experimenting?

 

[Shark]

When I first started this it was all a foreign language to me. I had no background in chemistry whatsoever. Reading everything I could find, often several times, I spent many a day totally confused. I read things until I thought I understood it only to run into a problem that forced me to read the same stuff again, only to be more confused. I was one of those back in the day when to many beginner questions could get you banned, and didn’t ask very many. Today we can ask for help to understand what we read with no worry. Reading a lot, and bringing questions to the forum before creating situations is easy and is the right way to do it. Let those trying to help you, walk you step by step through it. It is easier to learn to do it right than it is to learn to fix every problem. Eventually you will start understanding things you didn’t realize you knew. It is just there from reading something else. All the time I have spent reading this forum as well as a huge number of books, I am still learning. I enjoy learning difficult things.

Make a plan first.

Run it, step by step, by the forum.

Take sound advice and adapt to these shared experience of the board.

Step by step, work your way through the processes.

Believe me, if you want it bad enough to learn it, you want to learn it right.

 

[Elemental]

@Paul73

As a school educated but hobby chemist now, I'll tell you there are three ways to get rid of your waste.

1 - Read and study the forum, specifically this message board for dealing with waste. It walks through, step by step what is required, and only used three cheap materials. Soda Ash, Iron Metal, and Sodium Hydroxide. You'll want to filter it in the end, but all in all, a simple procedure if you do the homework of making a plan, test your plan on a small amount of waste, then scale your way up to processing a larger batch of waste. I'm following this same procedure to process ~10 gallons of leftover copper nitrate from last seasons refining.

2 - Pay a company to take it off your hands. There are plenty of chemical waste companies available and they'll take your magic elixir and charge you a pretty penny for it. But it leaves you with a clear conscious and no waste to treat. (Consider it a small price to pay for the gold your just recovered!) Just make sure all your precious metals are out before handing it over. When it doubt, cement it all out (preferably on copper metal).

3 - Piss off the EPA, by which I mean either dump it somewhere, or dispose of it improperly by sealing it up and sending it to the dump. I live on a little 10 acre lake. I'm pretty sure my 10 gallons of copper nitrate would kill just about everything in that lake and poison the people who fish the lake as well. (This really isn't an option, but clearly states that illegally dumping is a bad idea.)

So, there you go, two good and one bad way to deal with your waste. Luckily for you, you're a part of this forum now, who has untold amounts of knowledge and training across a wide range to things. If you get stuck, just drop a question in here and someone will gladly give you a bit of advice on what you should think about trying next.

Elemental

Edit: In regards to your holding tank, if it's a normal septic tank with a drain field, you're going to be killing all the bacteria in there that break down your human waste by dumping your chemical waste in there. Septic tanks only work by having the bacteria eat your solids wastes, so you don't have to have them pumped as often. Frugal already hit on the heavy metals going into your drain field as well and basically making your own mini superfund site.

A tale from long ago, I grew up in a small town in Western Michigan. This little town had everyone on well water. Well, the town also had a dry cleaner, who much like yourself at first, thought dumping was no big deal. So every night, he'd dump his dry-cleaning chemicals out in the storm drain behind his store. Well, people in town started getting sick, and they tested the water and sure enough his chemicals had spread through-out the entire aquifer supporting the town. The town then had to pay (a lot of money) to have a water-tower put in along with piping to a new well station over 10 miles of out town, so they could have clean water. Please don't by like this dry-cleaner. One day you'll move on as we all do, but whatever mess you leave behind will stay.

 

[Jimbriese]

Concrete is porous and does not stop liquids from seeping into the ground not a big deal when it’s waste water from house hold use but with the by products of these processes can result in big problems for ground water