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Treating copper sulphate waste as school project
2003
I am a student in Canada. I am doing a project for my chemistry class. The problem is we are to come up with a way to convert a sizable volume of copper sulphate [on eBay or Amazon] solution waste liquid to solids that can be safely sent to landfill and water which can be safely poured down the drain without any danger to the environment. I was wondering if anyone would have any ideas as to how to go about doing this.
Your help is greatly appreciated
Nick
Nick L.- Canada
Hi Nick. It's not quite clear to me whether this is a "real" project and you truly & actually intend to pour a large amount of treated waste down the drain, or whether this is just a hypothetical project, a 'thought experiment'. If you actually intend to do this, forget it -- the idea of untrained students being responsible for wastewater treatment is unacceptable.
If this is purely a hypothetical project as a lesson in chemistry, so we can forget about regulations, treatment permits, manifests, operator certifications, Right-to-Know announcements for the public, training, safety equipment, personal protective equipment, cradle-to-grave responsibility, testing, chain of custody, and all that other stuff … steel wool [on eBay or Amazon] will reduce the soluble copper content tremendously, then you can neutralize with lime to precipitate most of the copper and some of the iron, and filter it out for disposal. Good luck.
Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
2003
A. I came across the following company, based in Australia, whose online presence (http://www.surfacetechnology.com.au/cookware-recoating/) offers a price sheet and states:
We also offer a domestic cookware recoating service and are able to coat the insides of metal cookware and lids, as well as BBQ plates, muffin trays, woks and sandwich makers. Quality kitchenware sets such as Le Creuset or Bessemer can be expensive to replace. We can remove the old scratched or damaged internals and recoat with a new non stick coating for a fraction of the cost of new cookware.
Depending on the type of industrial or domestic cookware you send us, we will select the appropriate non-stick coating to use. Non stick coatings, commonly referred to as the brand Teflon®, owned by the DuPont® company, are actually polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE). We coat products in PTFE for a host of business critical industrial applications, so you can be assured that the PTFE coating product we use will be of the highest specification. It will also be tough, hard wearing, and above all, food safe.
- Washington, DC
January 7, 2018
Q. Hi!
I am working to decrease the waste that my lab produces by precipitating out copper, nickel, and zinc ions from a solution until the ions concentrations are below the EPA acceptable level. I began by precipitating out the ions using sodium carbonate / washing soda [affil links] (Na2CO3), but the liquid layer is still very blue in color, so copper ions specifically must still be in solution. I was considering plating out the copper onto aluminum foil and just adding that to my solid waste container. Is this a viable option? Will copper plate out onto aluminum foil?
Thanks!
- Marion, Indiana, USA
July 19, 2018
A. Hi Abigail. I believe the process you are thinking about is called cementation. Soapless 00 steel wool [on eBay or Amazon], rather than aluminum foil, should work well for it.
My protogé told me years ago that scrap automobiles and other scrap steel were sometimes placed in rivers and streams to remove copper ions way back when. I sometimes feel like I remember seeing this during air travel many decades ago, but really don't know whether I remember it or the images are just the product of a focused imagination. In any case, yes, the copper will spontaneously plate out onto the steel, and steel wool [affil link on Amazon] has a huge surface area available for it.
Regards,
Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
July 2018
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