safe disposal of chemicals

Hi Folks,

An old friend of mine in San Angelo Tx had a darkroom in his garage. He went through a LOT of chemicals processing film etc, an just dumped the waste in his yard. He was rewarded by a big green patch in his grass. I don't think that most of the chemicals used in processing film are particularly toxic. I will concede that he did mostly Black and White, and some Cibachrome. Long time ago...

However, you've gotten my curiosity up. I have seen jewelers use cyanide solutions for some processes. What do you do with old cyanide? If you casually mixed it with some acid, we might be reading about you in the morning paper. It worries me to think about someone mixing chemicals together to "neutralize" them without being enough of a chemist to know what the process will yield. If you had a vacuum pump, you might be able to suck the water out of salt compounds, but at what risk of sucking HCl or H2SO4 out as well,especially if the PH has been adjusted with acids? I wouldn't use my good pump...

I think that the SMART thing to do is to collect the compatible chemicals in 5 gallon containers, and haul them to someone who knows what to do with them. Or else, do a lot of homework, to make sure what you want to do is safe.

It is amazing how useful a city sewer with the gigantic dilution ratio it offers is to the home tinkerer with occasional chemical usage!

Brownnsharp

It being a dull day, I decide to respond to what Gunner foisted Sat, 10 Jul 2004 08:44:14 GMT on rec.crafts.metalworking , viz:

I've wondered about that ....

They combine with the bases forming salts. I'm reminded of a highschool(?) teacher story...

Tim

-- "I've got more trophies than Wayne Gretsky and the Pope combined!" - Homer Simpson Website @

Perhaps not! I don't know the conditions for these two chemicals to react to produce nitrogen trichloride, but if you got them right,you would not have mouse or raoch problems, but a rehousing problem!

Cheers! - G.H.Ireland.

NCl3 (Chloramine) a yellow oily thermally unstable explosive liquid is prepared by bubbling chlorine gas through a heated concentrated ammonia solution. The simple mixing of cleaning (3%) ammonia water with HCl may indeed produce some small quantity of Chloramine but never enough to be an explosion hazard. The principle product of NH3 (aq) with HCl (aq) is NH4Cl (Ammonium Chloride, Sal Ammoniac[salt of ammonia])

mixing chlorine and ammonia releases free chlorine. To really amuse your friends, drop a pool tablet into a bucket of ammonia cleaner. Leave of course....

Gunner

"The entire population of Great Britain has been declared insane by their government. It is believed that should any one of them come in possession of a firearm, he will immediately start to foam at the mouth and begin kiling children at the nearest school. The proof of their insanity is that they actually believe this." -- someone in misc.survivalism

Um... you mis-spelled "aBuse" :)

And I'd add the suggestion that you not just leave, but leave IMMEDIATELY, and at a high rate of speed, preferably running into whatever wind may be blowing. Of course, this assumes you aren't interested in spending the rest of your life (don't worry, it'll be fairly short) coughing your lungs out in little bloody globs...

As I indicated, it does kill roaches and mice pretty well.... and by definition is a WMD.

Then of course we can simply pop the back of the refridgerator off and crack the coils, while letting the escaping refridgerant pass through a flame, making phosgene...which also killes mice and roaches.....

Kitchen sink chemistry is soooo interesting....

"The entire population of Great Britain has been declared insane by their government. It is believed that should any one of them come in possession of a firearm, he will immediately start to foam at the mouth and begin kiling children at the nearest school. The proof of their insanity is that they actually believe this." -- someone in misc.survivalism