Evaporating Ultrasonic Waste Water

I bet one of those portacool swamp coolers would evaporate waste water, as long as it had no oil in it. The grids are expensive though, maybe something else could be substituted for those

tomjelly said:

I bet one of those portacool swamp coolers would evaporate waste water, as long as it had no oil in it. The grids are expensive though, maybe something else could be substituted for those

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Wouldn't you be breathing it then ?

I'd blow it outside as an exhaust fan. It should leave most of the contaminants behind as well.

tomjelly said:

I'd blow it outside as an exhaust fan. It should leave most of the contaminants behind as well.

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So when you really need it later on, you fill it full of water and then what ?

I used to maintain a very large industrial hydraulic system.. We had an oil clarifies that removed water from 55 gal drums of recycled oil in couple of hours.

The clarifier heated the oil to 50 degrees C it and put the oil under vacuum and pull the water off as vapor. What was left went through a large cartridge filter and returned to the main system. If all you want out is the water, then the filter bed is optional.

DDoug said:

So when you really need it later on, you fill it full of water and then what ?

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Sole use would be for evaporative disposal. Could be eventually repurposed back to a cooler after cleaning if no longer needed. If an alternative grid media was used that would be easier as that material could be disposed as dry solid waste

tomjelly said:

Sole use would be for evaporative disposal. Could be eventually repurposed back to a cooler after cleaning if no longer needed. If an alternative grid media was used that would be easier as that material could be disposed as dry solid waste

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Seems to be a very expensive waste of a good swamp cooler, forever contaminated.

This would be something to discuss with your state or local DEP and or your waste recycler unless you are well versed in hazardous waste management. Best to gather information in the form of "what ifs" or "could we" rather than I am doing this.... and would like to do this.... Just avoids drawing unwanted attention and in my experience people are helpful and don't want to dig out issues but if they are presented with one they will have to pursue it.

The issue here is since the waste stream is getting recycled it would be excluded from your hazardous waste generation rates or totals per federal DEP RCRA regulations or your state version and you don't want to mess that up. By essentially condensing the waste it could push levels of contaminants outside of what your recycler can handle. If it can't be recycled it could be classed as hazardous waste dependent on silver content. If it gets categorized as haz waste and you are evaporating water out of it, you are now considered to be processing hazardous waste, not just generating it, which is not allowed unless properly licensed to do so.

Have worked with a shop that machined a lot of brass and their coolant gets contaminated with lead. They found that more frequent coolant changes to keep contamination inside of levels that could still be recycled was more cost effective than less frequent changes if lead got over the amount allowed to be recycled. If it couldn't be recycled it got classed as hazardous waste, went towards their generation rate and was much more costly to dispose of.

I asked this question years ago at my worplace. They had many 55 gallon drums of mixed unknown chemical, radioactive waste. (long story). There were disposal sites that took unknown chem waste, and sites that took radioactive waste. But none that took the combination. I pointed out they could just leave the drums open, as it was mostly water. The person pointed out that if you were reducing the volume by evaporation, then you were TREATING the waste. And if you were doing this without the site being pemitted to treat waste, you could rack up some truly amazing fines, real fast.

When I had the shop ,coupla blocks down by the creek was a drum recycling business........he had gradually built up a large collection of liquid waste in drums.........anyhoo,while he was thinking out what he'd do with it,we had the 2011 flood....problem solved.

Go back 50 years .....yep,its 50 years.... ,1972,the famous Willawong Toxic Waste facility (facility being big holes in the ground)........my yard ,that I sold last year,was right next to the toxic waste dump..........which was why it was so cheap $4000 for 3 acres .......the place was a favourite target for protesters ,not that it was big in those days..........Used to cost 7c a gallon to dump any kind of liquid waste......the guy at the gate would collect the cash ,and ask "acid or alkali".....go left,go right............Sewage and grease trap waste was right down the back (the place was over 1000acres).....far as possible from his office.....The good old days.

Seriously?

You could'a just shipped it to New Joisey!
What were y'all thinkin'?


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Think Snow Eh!
Ox

No need to ,da Joisey boys gotta branch out here in the "waste disposal business."

If you want to recover the heat, drum heater, insulate the sides of the drum, and buy a recent model 70 pint per day dehumidifier and put it in the same room.
The folks complaining that evaporating the water costs too much money are probably losing heat to radiation. It only takes 2.4 kilowatt hours of energy to vaporize a gallon of water.

DavidScott said:

Any oil or scum on the surface will almost stop evaporation so it needs to be removed. Another thought is to use a bubbler instead of heat.

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I made a bubbler by using about 10 feet of .25 polyurethane hose coiled around a metal X frame so it was about 10" dia and filled with pin prick holes. Awesome bubble boiling action. Fail! After 15 minutes there was a fog wafting from the barrel. Every single bursting bubble pops a microscopic droplet of oil straight up in the air making the nasty oily fog. I knew this happens with thin liquids like water and of course found out oil does that too. At some point I will vent it outside. Hope it does not make a stain on the building.

I bought a regenerative blower on ebay. I have several ideas, among them is to setup an anodizing line, one other idea is to make a bubbler for an evaporator. This seems to me like a cheap reliable way to get air into the liquid. I would put a vfd on it.

Good idea to check the vapor pressure of the various additives. Could quickly answer if a sealed solvent evaporator is a better solution. Converting hazardous liquid to hazardous vapor could be making one problem into a worse one.

I have a friend that used a $15 lemonade dispenser (the decorative ones for picnics) to put his belt skimmer sludge into.
Water went to the bottom. He cracked the valve and got the good coolant back. Put the oil with the rest of the waste oil. Repeat

If you wanted to go bigger you could always get something like this ol McDonald’s “orange like juice” containers you’d see in the 80. There 6gallons or so.

Flute Maker said:

It's fairly clean water from the Sonicor Ultrasonic. Akin to jewelry work. A little silver and gold dust, with polishing compound.
Payson.

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You don't have waste. You have an intermediate precious metal bearing compound. This is important, as it reduces the liability on your part. Because there is inherent value in your sludges, it is expected that you will treat them with more care than say a bucket of tramp oil. You also get more time to accumulate the compounds, up to a year.

What you can do is going to depend on what else is in your sludge. How much volume are you producing per year, and how much is it currently costing you to get rid of?

Have you tried simply filtering, then sending your filtered sludge off to a refinery? If there is much gold at all, you may find that the payment from the gold pays for the recycling of the water...silver not so much.

Also, depending on the quantity, you may be better off using a rotary evaporator to recycle the water back in to the ultrasonic cleaner. But filtration / evaporation has inherent costs, and it may not be worthwhile.