solvent towel evaporator trash can for shop? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 13, 2018, 03:01:04 am
content: So in a paint shop or some where where you might be using volatile solvents on rags to do cleaning, are there any engineered solutions for dry-evaporating them to make the waste safer? Like if you got a few handful of alcohol soaked rags you cleaned a chassis out with and you need to dispose of them. I hate the smelly solvent trash smell even if its dilluted. I mean something you can put outside where a fire safety engineer figured out its rated fire load, clearance perimeter and how to keep it cool incase it ignites and all that stuff.I know when they come out they will still be flammable with whatever heavy oil you degreased with them, unless you completely wash em, but they won't be pouring off fumes and such a explosion hazard. I would say they qualify as a serious hassle.Should this stuff just be burned immediately in a burn bucket? I kind of don't want dirty shop acetone or paint thinner going into my kitchen sink. I also don't like hanging it up like laundry or something.

author: RobertHolcombe
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 14, 2018, 05:51:09 am
content: Ones I've seen, commonly called "oily-waste cans", are usually fire engine red and have a foot level to open the lid, they're just passively ventilated though

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 14, 2018, 07:58:42 am
content: The problem with dirty metal laden oils, drying oils, paints, varnishes etc. is self-ignition. When thermally insulated by being soaked in a crumpled up rag and spread out over a large surface area within that limited volume, their natural oxidisation can warm up the rag, speeding up the oxidisation, until it runs away and the temperature increase reaches the flashpoint of the oil or any solvent vapours present.An oily waste can doesn't stop this - it just has a tight fitting lid to contain any fire, and is all metal.IMHO you need to get solvent rags out of the shop ASAP, immediately after the operation that created them as waste, and in any locality that you can legally burn trash, burn them. If you can't burn trash, you'll need to hang them up or spread them out flat to dry outside, then soak them with water and bag separately for disposal, immediately before the waste collection day. Don't let them hang about stacked, wetted or bagged!There's no engineered solution to evaporating them and letting drying oils, paints etc. dry on them (short of running your own dry-cleaning plant and solvent recovery still) because you absolutely don't want to concentrate that process in a small volume. If you *MUST* dry them, just get a bucket of clothes pegs and peg them to a wire mesh fence, or spread them out on the ground held down by stones.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 14, 2018, 08:13:25 am
content: well you gave me an idea better then a mesh pasta strainer in a mesh trash can:a cabinet made of mesh material (like stainless mosiquito netting type) that you open up and it has a bunch of pegs in it that you can impale the rags on quickly without having to deal with clips and stuff that can fail. Like a bed of nails welded to a back plate with a slight angle to gravity. Meant for leaving outside of the shop and you can even put a lock on it.The only thing is you would need to test it to make sure if it lights on fire how big the interior needs to be to contain the flame so anything near by won't catch fire even with wind and stuff. Might be fun with a leaf blower lol. and obviously so you can determine a max load rating.I find it to be a severe work flow interrupterto deal with that. And I would not want to regularly burn fires to dispose of crap.. dealing with dust, smoke, ugh... I guess you still need to burn stuff soaked with like linseed oil though.What is the procedure for burning those oils like motor oil or something like chain saw lubricant or old grease (the kind you use with a grease gun typically)? Can you let it absorb a bit of kerosene and burn it nicely? Stuff like vasoline or heavier. Or what is safe to use if not kerosene (I don't like working with gasoline at all), Maybe distilled white gasoline or something but def not automotive shit. Preferably something thats not easily explosive like gasoline.I also never thought of this, but is wd40 considered a fire hazard when used with something like shop towels? And the wd40 varients like silicone, dry, white lithium fortified, gel... I normally throw it outbut I never noticed anything funny with the towels soaked with wd40 etc (I have a thick metal trash can I use in my shop, sometimes if I don't work there it can hold stuff for like a few months).

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 14, 2018, 09:20:42 am
content: WD40 under certain circumstances can leave a varnish-like gum when it dries and ages, so I wouldn't want to bet that it couldn't cause a rag to ignite. However it isn't a fast drying oil, so I suspect you'd need a lot of it and it wouldn't happen quickly.If you have to burn heavy oils and greases, mixing them with charcoal is probably your best bet and dump a thick layer of well lit, burning clean charcoal on top so the vapours are heated enough to burn cleanly. Tempting as it is, I wouldn't want to burn large quantities of oil/grease in a cast-iron stove or similar, as there is a high risk of them condensing in the flue, drippping back and igniting causing a chimney fire.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 14, 2018, 09:28:18 am
content: So dousing them in kerosene and burning it in a mesh over a pot with lots of air flow won't work?I don't want to deal with charcoal. I do have a camping stove thats butane powered Maybe you can incinerate them over that if in a mesh bowl? I typically try to use as little as possible because it actually comes out being kind of expensive to keep buying oil.

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 14, 2018, 10:09:29 am
content: If its just greasy rags not huge volumes of grease or oil, just wad them up and poke them into the base of a burning fire, or build them into the middle of the fire before you light it. Any solid fuel fire will do - burnable trash, charcoal, coal, coke, wood or paper/card briquettes. Don't try to use a gas burner with integral gas canister or any sort of pressurised liquid fueled stove - the extra heat from the rags and their hot ash could overheat the fuel tank and I wouldn't want to be anywhere nearby if it ruptures or a seal fails.Fine wire mesh wont stand up to a fire for long, even if its stainless. The fine wire overheats, oxidises and will soon fail. OTOH a bit of scrap chicken wire to stop the rags blowing around and a propane weedburner to start them is viable for disposing of small quantities of ragsIt shouldn't interrupt your workflow too much - the rags will keep safely enough in a metal bucket with a tight fitting lid, outside for a day or so, so you can wait to burn them with all other burnable trash till the end of the day, or even the next day if you have enough that making sure the incinerator is burnt out and cold by quitting time is a problem.N.B. unidentified plastics are *NOT* burnable trash - if you burn the wrong plastic you'll poison yourself with hydrochloric or hydrofluoric acid vapours, or isocyanate vapours or worse.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 14, 2018, 10:46:27 am
content: At one place I worked, we had foot operated small steel trash cans with a vacuum hose attachment on the back to draw vapors out of the can. They were intended for holding paper towels and swabs and such which had solvent on them and prevent the fumes from accumulating in the work areas.

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 14, 2018, 11:01:32 am
content: That's great if you've got an explosive vapour proof ignition-safe extraction system . . .

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 14, 2018, 04:17:15 pm
content: do you have like a wood stove or something that you don't find this inconvenient?Also how safe are lubricants to burn from a chemcial standpoint? I won't burn plastics or much else for that matter but think about this: teflon lubricant. Wont it decompose into phosgene or some variant of it?https://www.wd40specialist.com/products/dry-lube/3-in-1 (lowes brand) sells PTFE (high temperature) and dry lube too, in smaller bottles. Green and grey. I actually use it all the time but its a bit worse at rust prevention then regular WD40.. but I find for some reason with a tool restoration if I wire brush it and lube it, a few months later you will get some rust patches, but when you deal with those and relube it (with the dry stuff), it tends to stay clean for much much longer on the 2nd time when you hit certain zones. Not sure if its because of moisture trapping or something else.I will say though, when I handled the stuff without gloves my farts had a serious coal smell to them. Like clean coal but coal none the less. It was some what disturbing,.I would imagine you would need a proper super heated incineration column to fully decompose those organic toxins well. Maybe with a enriched oxygen atmosphere.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 14, 2018, 04:24:36 pm
content: Quote from: Ian.M on December 14, 2018, 11:01:32 amWhats going to happen in the real world is the cheap companies are going to try to schedule when its plugged in to save money on electricity (or just unplug it because it has a green LED that takes a few nanowatts) and its not going to get used right and you will end up with barrel bombs like Doom.

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 14, 2018, 05:33:48 pm
content: I don't have a wood stove. When I was doing a lot of mechanical maintenance or paint & varnish work, rag waste went in the burn bin with any other safely flammable trash, dry garden clippings etc. and got burned at the end of the day while I was finishing tidying up and putting tools away. Otherwise, if it was just a few sheets of oily/greasy wipes, it got the put a smallish stone on it and hit it with the weedburner treatment, before I swept the yard. Yes, its inconvenient, but much less so than dealing with the aftermath of a waste fire in your workshop.Yes burning teflon isn't a good idea. A trace amount in a much larger solid fuel fire outside, left to burn to ash, isn't likely to be a major issue as long as you stay out of the smoke plume, but partially combusted fluorocarbons are extremely hazardous, by inhalation or even minor skin contact with their partially burnt residue. If you know there's any significant amount of teflon in the waste it would be stupid to burn it . . .