Wastes - The Elephant in the Room

[Pantherlikher]

There comes a point where extracting values becomes uneconomical. The problem is how to deal with these materials without spending a fortune.
On another thread, there was a discussion of using a commercial polysulphide compound to recover values but it precipitates everything. It's what it was designed to do.

If you have to pay to dispose of hazardous waste, the trick is to reduce the volume to where the cost per ton is economical.

Precipitation as sulphides works well in this respect. If done properly, there is little odor involved and the effluent is clean enough to recycle or dispose of in municipal waste streams.

one trick I use to reduce volume is store the liquids until winter and as they freeze, the ice pushes the salts to the bottom, leaving a very concentrated solution. The nice thing about it is I don't have to expend any energy to evaporate the solutions. All I have to do is leave a loop of rope in the top of the solution so that I have a handle to pull out the block of ice.

everything but the squeal.

My question is:
Does 1 metal replace another in spent solutions?
For instance AL will drop CU.
If so, can you use spent solutions to dissolve another? Dropping the metal farther up the reaction list? My thinking is using it to seperate the different metals 1 by 1 untill the solution is as non toxic as we can make it while collecting the different scrap metals?
There's alot of containers involved, each removing a different metal, but is it even a possibility?
Just a newby's thought on what to do with waste. If even to remove tin and solder.

 

[qst42know]

To stair step this one metal at a time I would expect most often you would consume metals of value to cement metal powders of little value.

Interesting idea for an experiment but I don't see your plan as cost effective for recovery of anything outside of the specific steps described on the forum.

 

[BJL1984]

ask around at your local scrap yards, Most will take your copper powders, the Company I work with up here in new hampshire, Assays my precious metals and also allowed me to make a deal with them that they buy the copper in powder form less then clean (#1) price and in bar from clean or less depending on how it works up under the x-ray test, It my be a nominal amount, i am no getting rich of the copper but it almost always pays for the gas on the 45 minute ride to get there, So in theory making the whole process a little more cost effective, just some food for thought, for those who are looking to do something with the left over bits