Dealing with my mercury waste

Remember to keep it a dilute solution

Nile Red

Thanks! I'll pick some up. I really appreciate your help.

Alyssa Anderson

Sodium bicarbonate is way too weak. You really need NaOH or KOH

Nile Red

As for a base, would sodium bicarbonate work or do I need to go for sodium hydroxide?

Alyssa Anderson

The water also makes droplets that can kind of look like oil. I would suggest adding a small amount of water to the base over detergent. The detergent will take a lot of washing to get out

Nile Red

What do you think of the idea of adding a little dish detergent? I've added the water, but there still seems to be quite a bit of oil adhering to the mercury.

Alyssa Anderson

No problem. Just be sure to save all your mercury waste in a bottle!

Nile Red

Thanks!

Alyssa Anderson

Mine used to be under oil, so i can help. Just add water and shake the crap out of it. A lot of the oil will float to the top. That is the easiest method, but the results aren't perfect. Adding a very small amount of base (maybe 1M? I dont remember the exact molarity) can help. I have a video on cleaning mercury. It uses a combo of dilute NaOH and dilute nitric acid.

Nile Red

I have some mercury under oil, it's been pretty thoroughly shaken in the past so it's all broken up in tiny beads. I was wondering if you had any suggestions on getting it back into a single body of mercury?

Alyssa Anderson

I have so much to do now, I am not sure I will. We will see though!

Nile Red

Yessir especially odd objects like condensers and frit filters

No problem!

Nile Red

Thanks for this video. Waste disposal is important.

mrkhrdr@gmail.com

What do you mean my cleaning workflow for general items? Like cleaning glassware and stuff?

Nile Red

Loved it! Honestly this is going to sound like a housewife dream but I wouldn't mind a video of your cleaning workflow for general items oh and how to synth sodium thiosulfate for pesky iodine stains lol

Haha, n2o! I forgot again...I'll look into making that the next one

Nile Red

Love the video. Thanks for sharing. I still look forward to the N2O and plastics videos but I will take what I can get!

It would definitely be cool to see how the waste is processed commercially.

Nile Red

I like this idea for a series. From time to time, I'll see the major YouTube chemists handwave the disposal thing. And as I understand it, that's reasonable because they generally use a commercial service to deal with it. But it certainly does tend to make me wonder what happens next to the substances in question. And I find myself wondering the same thing when I go to the county dump and see all the different categories of kinda-scary stuff that they accept. I did once get to see a facility that handles nuclear-waste vitrification. That's a super-fascinating process.

Paul Grodt

We will see. I don't think it will be a big issue.

Nile Red

Pretty interesting. I'm curious to know whether the celite is any kind of problem in the conversion back to metallic Hg, or whether you can just ignore it and it'll float to the top of the mercury.

jason black