Use tub instead of bucket for passive leaching?

[924T]

I was wondering if a 55 quart plastic tub with a latching lid could be used instead of a plastic bucket
for running a passive leaching process?

I've notices that the plastic buckets seem to be made of a stiffer, thicker plastic.

Since the tub plastic is more flexible, I'm assuming it might be more porous, and that that might
pose a problem.

I did see the latching lid of a tub as an advantage, because a thin strip of gasketing material around
the upper lip of the tub could provide a good seal to prevent fume leakage.

then, if 1 or more air bubblers were being used in the solution (I'm considering Copper Sulfate), one could
drill a hole in the lid and use the positive pressure created with the bubblers to force fumes through a tube,
through an activated carbon in-line filter, to minimize or eliminate any odors, which is an ongoing issue
for those of us trying to accomplish recovery/refining in a densely populated urban area.

This is an idea, not a plan yet, and I'm wide open for forum analysis and commentary on it.

Cheers,

Mike

 

[g_axelsson]

Use small pieces of lime stone for neutralization and a piece of cloth as a filter to catch the mist. I think that would work quite good.

Göran

 

[924T]

Goran,

How are you doing? Well, I hope.

Is it snowing there yet?

I wouldn't have thought of limestone, but, as fate would have it, I happen to have some chunks of limestone
in my back yard, so for once it won't be an impossible quest just to experiment with something!

Also, mist is something I would not have factored in as a possibility from tiny bubbles of air coming up
through a solution. Is that something that people with large fish tanks must contend with? Amazing.

And, do you think a tub (I'm looking at the Sterilite brand, with a white lid and clear sides) is safe to use?

Cheers,

Mike

 

[chlaurite]

It mostly matters what plastic the bucket uses.

Polypropylene (#5) counts as one of the best, with great thermal stability (you can boil water in it without a problem, though keep in mind it will get a lot softer and bend more at that temperature), resistance to caustics (actually one of the recommended "secondary containment" materials for both strong acids and bases), and resistance to solvents (you can store gasoline in it). It pretty much does it all.

High-Density Polyethylene (#2) comes in a close second, though it tends to soften and eventually fail (as in, over months or years, not an hour or two) in strong acids or solvents.

The rest have a variety of strong and weak points - And if going by numbers, avoid #7 because it means "everything else", and you can't trust its chemical properties in most situations.

So given PP or HDPE, you really only need to ask yourself if the container's other properties (hardness, wall thickness, rigidity, overall size) will work well for your intended use.

 

[g_axelsson]

Hi Mike,

no, no snow yet... 8)
... just raining, and I have to go out into the woods to repair a laser based wind measure station today. At least it keeps the bears away! :mrgreen:

You always get aerosoles when bubbles bursts, there's no difference if you are boiling or just blowing air through a liquid.
Everyone with an aquarium knows the area above the air stone is always wet if it's close to the surface.

As for the tub, I have no idea, I'm not familiar with that brand.

Just don't jump in the wrong tub when taking a bath!

Göran

 

[bswartzwelder]

Mike,

You might want to use a little larger hose on the outlet than what you will be using on the inlet. If there is any chemical reaction which give off fumes or gasses in any amount, those gasses in addition to what is being pumped into your container may cause a pressure buildup. I am assuming (from what I've seen in the local stores) the lid will be a pretty good size with a lot of surface area and light in weight. It may have very good latches, and hopefully the latches will be on all sides. Any pressure buildup, no matter how small might try to pop the lid off. Just a thought, take it for what it's worth.

Bert

 

[chlaurite]

Everyone with an aquarium knows the area above the air stone is always wet if it's close to the surface.

1) Cut out a disc from a milk jug, as big as possible that will fit inside your beaker.
2) Poke a hole in the center just a hair smaller than your air tube (this works better with a rigid air tube, BTW).
3) Put the tube through the hole, and position your plastic disc about half an inch above the surface of your liquid.

This does two things - First, the underside of the disc gets covered in acid, showing you how much liquid a bubbler can spit out. And second, all that mess drips harmlessly back down and stays in your beaker, rather than making a circle of ejected acid all around your work area.

 

[Pantherlikher]

Morning, well, here anyways.
I use a 1 gal. ice-cream bucket for AP. I have a hose for the bubble in 1 hole in the lid and have a drinking straw out of another. The straw had fluid near the bottom but the rest of the straw stays dry. It seems the moisture does not travel all the way out of the straw. Place a full sheet of paper over the straw so it bends and allows air to escape and has not gotten wet. And there is not enough pressure build up to pop the lid yet. The bucket has yet to show signs for acid attack as well.
Caution is always good though so give a small acid test before committing to a possible problem

B.S.
...Mornings are never good untill the coffee says so... or the wife...

 

[FrugalRefiner]

Morning, well, here anyways.
I use a 1 gal. ice-cream bucket for AP. I have a hose for the bubble in 1 hole in the lid and have a drinking straw out of another. The straw had fluid near the bottom but the rest of the straw stays dry. It seems the moisture does not travel all the way out of the straw.

Your straw is a very frugal reflux condenser. 8)

As any mist travels up the straw with the air that is exiting it's condensing on the straw and dripping back into your container. Always use a straw or tube large enough in diameter that if a few droplets combine and temporarily block the tube, the drop will not be blown out the top before it breaks up and drips back down.

Dave

 

[924T]

chlaurite,

Dude, did you know all that plastics information right off the top of your mind?

Amazing.

I don't have much time this evening, but I'm on a quest to sleuth out the type of plastic
the Sterilite tub I'm looking at is made of.

Thanks for sharing that information!

Cheers,

Mike

 

[924T]

g_axelsson,

Aerosoles?

amazing. that's a word I've never heard of, so I'm compelled to investigate it.

That's one of the things I love about this forum------sometimes, when you least expect it, you can get your brain and your vocabulary stretched, in a very, very good and fun way.

If you do a LOT of reading here, unless you're inert, you stand a high
probability of your knowledge and vocabulary growing, even if you're not consciously aware it's happening.

And that, my friends, is good stuff!

Cheers,

Mike

 

[924T]

Well,

It turns out that 'aerosole' appears to be the EU spelling for 'aerosol'----------tried the 3 main search engines,
got virtually identical search results (if that's not a crime.....really, really disgusting)------they all treated
'aerosole' as a spelling error.

However, if I ever see that spelling again, I'll know what it means, which is cool.

Nowhere on the Sterilite website could I find info pertaining to the type of plastic their 66 qt. clear tub is
made of-----------so, I did the next best thing, and hit Amazon.com, and posted that question you might be
surprised, sometimes you can dig up some information that way.

Cheers,

Mike

 

[chlaurite]

Dude, did you know all that plastics information right off the top of your mind?

I had to look up the recycling numbers, actually, but the rest, yeah. I got bored easily as a kid. 8)

I don't have much time this evening, but I'm on a quest to sleuth out the type of plastic the Sterilite tub I'm looking at is made of.

Just look on the bottom in the triangle, the recycling number will almost always tell you. A quick Google suggests that Sterlite uses just about all of them in various products, so the brand name doesn't really help you.

As a rule of thumb though, both HDPE and PP feel "waxy" but have good rigidity. If clear, they will have a milky haze to them. If your container in question looks crystal clear, you probably have PET or PS, neither of which work well for our needs.

 

[924T]

chlaurite,

Many thanks, the look and/or feel information you provided allowed me to rule out the tub I had
been considering------it's clear, and the lid didn't fit as tight as I thought it would.

So, on to buckets!

I do have on hand some heavy duty bakery 3 gallon icing plastic buckets, actually thicker walled than a normal
5 gallon plastic bucket, that I've been using to organize motors, boards, etc., when disassembling disc drives.

The lids for these buckets are gasketed, and it takes an act of congress to get a lid off, if you put it on
properly. I don't want to be having to do WWF moves on a bucket with solution in it, just to get the lid
off so I can check the progress of the chemical reaction----the disaster probability would be high.

Perhaps i could cut a circle of plexiglass to use as a lid, and put a gasket on it (Permagasket??) ?
I'm wide open for ideas on that.

Cheers,

Mike

 

[Pantherlikher]

Why are you trying to get a complete air tight seal on something you are pumping air into?. A bucket with lid sitting on top properly drilled to fit the air hose and a straw of some king is just fine. Unless you intend on placing it where you will knock it over which an accident waiting to happen anyway.

B.S.
...Sometimes over thinking something leads to complications...

 

[g_axelsson]

Well,

It turns out that 'aerosole' appears to be the EU spelling for 'aerosol'----------tried the 3 main search engines,
got virtually identical search results (if that's not a crime.....really, really disgusting)------they all treated
'aerosole' as a spelling error.

However, if I ever see that spelling again, I'll know what it means, which is cool.

My mistake it seems you're right, the proper spelling is aerosols. There isn't one "EU-spelling" here, EU is made up of many different countries with very different languages. Swedes speaks Swedish for example. Aerosol is the same spelling in English and Swedish but aerosols in Swedish is "aerosoler", guess that was the source of my extra e.

... but as spelling mistakes on the forum I think it was a minor one. Here are a few that really annoys me.
- saftey instead of safety
- brake instead of break
- hci instead of HCl

Just letting some steam off, not boiling... :lol:

Göran

 

[solar_plasma]

I think it's just okay, if after the USA have infiltrated the language of our kids for a half century with anglicisms, now they get some eurocisms back :lol: *kidding* - no, I appreciate all feedback for mistakes. Learning better english is part of the fun here.

 

[Gratilla]

I was wondering if a 55 quart plastic tub with a latching lid could be used instead of a plastic bucket
for running a passive leaching process?

This is something I've been considering myself. In these parts we have a fairly active second-hand market in plastic drums of all sizes, previously used for delivery of various chemicals, vegetable oils etc - with/without lids, with/without metal sealing clamps, etc.

You don't mention your chemistry (maybe I missed it), although you do mention your need for air bubbling (oxygen requirement?). I've considered the drums for two types of leaches:
a) SSN, which doesn't require oxygen, but does react with most metals, and
b) Cyanide, which does require oxygen, although is largely UNreactive with the steel in our grinding drums. For this, however, instead of bubbling air through, my plan was to squirt in oxygen from a cylinder to supersaturate the leach and provide for a largely oxygen atmosphere in the air gap above the liquid. So as the oxygen was used up, further oxygen would dissolve into the leach from the air/oxygen gap [as the drum was rotated]).

 

[924T]

g_axelsson,

I hope I didn't offend you with my EU comment------my education continues, as I honestly had never sat down
and thought about the fact that the EU may have standardized the currency, but it has not (and thank goodness for
that) standardized the cultures and languages of all the member countries. Thanks for pointing that out to me!

As far as mispellings go, I wish I were exempt from that, but within the last week, with English being my native
language, I mispelled 'expensive' as 'exspensive' in a post here on the forum. Amazing.

Whether it's spelled as aerosol or aerosole, I learned something I had not known, which is that an aquarium
air bubbler will produce a mist, which will allow me to be safer when I run a passive stripping solution. Also,
you're the one that, in another thread last year, alerted me to the fact that an ultrasonic cleaner emits an ultra fine mist, which was something I also had not known, which made my work environment safer.

And, speaking of a continuing education, while on a weekend trip to Springfield, IL, our state capitol, I met a couple
from the Faroe Islands, who were here on vacation and a quest to drive the Route 66 highway from beginning to end.

I don't consider myself geographically retarded, but I had never heard of the Faroe Islands, so over 2 days we had
quite a fun cultural exchange, and I helped them find where route 66 originated, and then they were on their way.

It's all good!

Cheers,

Mike

 

[924T]

Gratilla,

Sorry, I completely forgot to mention the processes I'm looking at running in a tub or a bucket.

There are 3 different solutions under consideration: Povidone Iodine, Copper Sulfate, and 16-0-0 fertilizer,
which I think is Sodium Nitrate.

I have run 2 very small experiments with the Iodine, without using an air bubbler, so I need to run 2 Iodine
experimental batches, with air bubblers, one with HCl added, one without, and compare the results. If I
understand the patents I've read on this correctly, the Iodine both strips and refines.

The Copper Sulfate, from what I've read here on the forum, should work pretty well for stripping the
Kovar gold plated pins from Pentium 4 CPU chips (I do need to find out what other CPU chips have the
Kovar pins, too), and I also want to try Floppy Drive pins in it too.

The 16-0-0 fertilizer appears to be more cost effective for dissolving Lead, so I want to run some experiments
with that.

Cyanide is something that looks pretty scary to me, so I want to take a look at Mercury, even though it has
a bad reputation, to see if it can actually be used safely.

Cheers,

Mike