Popular Science article on how to properly dispose used engine oil.
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Previously:
https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...780#post148215
https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...485#post154898
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Popular Science article on how to properly dispose used engine oil.
https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/h...l_fullsize.jpg
Previously:
https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...780#post148215
https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...485#post154898
Not sure about engine oil, but diesel is - unfortunely - highly biodegradable...
I remember having neighbours in the 60's that did that...
Not a good idea in 1963. Still not a good idea in 2021.
That is funny
Seems like good advice.
My dad would slosh it on the gravel drive way to the house. I don't remember everything from my childhood but I do not recall any disposal/recycling centers. I am sure vehicle repair shops at that time had means of disposal but my dad would not bother.
Any ideas on how to repurpose used oil?
Used motor can and is recycled for various uses...
I've poured many a quart of recycled oil through my pickup years ago.
In Tanzania they mixed oil slop into the bunkering diesel for ships after showing you a clean sample they inject the slop,disposal problem gone.Consumer problems then commence with no recourse as they give a clean
sealed sample as evidence.If taking on 50000 lt not something you pick up .
Fence post paint.
I know several guys who use it to heat their shops.
According to the Florida Water and Pollution Control Operators Association, "...just one quart of oil can contaminate up to 250,000 gallons of drinking water or cause an oil slick almost 2 acres in size. Backyard mechanics dump over 40 times more used oil into the environment each year than the Exxon Valdez spilled into Alaska's Prince William Sound (11 million gallons)."
Years ago, I visited a castle that was built before the crusades. It has a functioning water cistern. It was eye opening to see the care people took back then to keep the cistern and surrounding area clean from contamination. They understood that oil and tar should be kept away from ground water over a thousand years ago. It boggle my mind that people thought that was okay to do what the article described only a few decades ago.
Run it through a paper filter. Works great for heating your shop.Quote:
Originally Posted by hotdog0627
I installed a waste oil fired boiler, with radiant floor heat distribution, for an excavating contractor. His shop generates hundreds of gallons of used oil each year. He also collects used oil from many other business contacted he has. The burner will handle anything from #2 diesel to heavy gear lube. Burns clean with no smoke or smell. It does create enough ask to require cleaning the combustion chamber and heat exchanger every 1000 hours. The burner has disposed of coming up on 7000 gallons of far. The EPA tried to shutdown waste oil burning a few years ago, but it has proven to be less polluting that the re-refining process. https://www.energylogic.com/waste-oil-boilers/el-375b/Quote:
Originally Posted by hotdog0627
As far as recycling, oil does not wear out, it just gets contaminated with byproducts of combustion and the additives get depleted. So it is easy to re-refine into good oil again. Transportation costs to the few refineries that exist make it not cost effective in many parts of the country. Companies that transport the oil charge shops to pick it up, then charge the refinery for delivery. We used to have a re-refiner here in central Ohio, but they kept blowing blowing themselves up and having large spills. They finally went out of business due to fines and costs of rebuilding. https://www.dispatch.com/article/201...NEWS/306039907
Pouring it into the ground is a bad idea. Letting it soak into the ground keeps the air and microbes away and it will eventually contaminate ground water. Left exposed to air, like a spill on the surface, it will biodegrade over time. They used to spray it on country roads to hold down dust.
It is crazy some of the things we used to do to get rid of things we no longer want. How many remember bathroom wall cabinet with the razor blade disposal slot in the back?
I knew a Missionary / mechanic, Steve Keim, in Mexico that had a Dodge Ram diesel. He had over 600,000 miles on it. He collected abandoned cars from the roads (no need for titles there). He also worked on the local people's cars as a ministry. When he changed their oil, he kept all of it. He filtered it, mixed it with kerosene, which was much more plentiful and cheaper than gas or diesel fuel, and burned it in that truck. For many many years he made many trips to the US with that truck bringing crafts and goods from the region he lived in and sold them then hauled supplies and money back to Querétaro. I was told about 12 or 13 years ago he was on his way back to Querétaro and fell asleep somewhere in the mountains and went over the edge. He showed me a church building he built in a nearby village. He built a scaffold on top of an old van he rescued and used it to weld the entire structure. He told me it was cheaper to buy steel than wood and he had a welder / generator so he just used that. There were sections of the building where he used car frame sections and scrap he had collected from all over the area. In many ways, he was a hero. RIP Steve!
I do my grandpa had one in his bathroom cabinet......I miss my grandpa
In college my dorm room had a wall cabinet over the sink with the slot. It was also back to back with the adjacent room. When I heard the adjacent room run their water (meaning someone was at the sink) I would take a bent coat hanger and hit the inside of the door, and often times it would smack them in the head. I'm sure they thought their room was haunted.Quote:
Originally Posted by hemmjo
Worst idea ever. Polluted water showing up everywhere.
As a kid, I'd pour used engine oil all around the fence to keep grass from growing. That was back when edging was done by hand with a scissors. Ya know what, that grass grew back every year... so much for bio-hazard garbage. The earth eats everything, and we can do nothing about it.
It occurred to me one day that after two world wars the industrial wastes created to manufacture countless tons of munitions spent on land and sea, so many ships sunk in the Atlantic and Pacific, at that time 3 nuclear weapons detonated plus thousands since yet we are still here. To me the real threat are the mountains of garbage on our lands and the islands of garbage floating in our oceans... can you imagine what has sunk to the bottom. Yes the Earth is resilient but we all have to live in the garbage we create
You have no idea. I'm designing a bunch of stuff to reduce ghost fishing and working with a number of companies in that field. It's just totally crazy what's down there. The government gave out a bunch of contracts to start cleaning up a bunch of the junk from the ocean, so a local company went out with all these expensive underwater drones and side-scan sonar to try to find debris underwater. The just put all of it away after a few hours. There was no need. No matter where they put the hook in the water they would immediately hit something. They were telling me it was just unreal.Quote:
Originally Posted by TrickieDickie
thus the clean water issues....I remember my dad pulling the old 64 & newer dodges over a ditch just 30 feet from the fresh water well and draining the oil....he was a engineer....
I have done some mission work in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. There is no trash collection of any kind. Some people burn their trash, others just toss it on the ground, where it ends up in the creeks, rivers, and the ocean. I have to imagine it is the same in most other countries with no infrastructure.
Even here in the US, the amount of trash along the roads is disgusting. I often carry a 5 gallon bucket and trash picker with me when I walk the dog. I have never failed to fill the bucket during a walk.
when we used to go camping we always came back with a load after hikes. sometimes big but mostly not a lot. Some people do not care weather they live in a rat infested **** hole or not and dont care weather any body else does either. I've see this all over the world in my travels.it isant limited to any paticular culture or nation.
"It is crazy some of the things we used to do to get rid of things we no longer want. How many remember bathroom wall cabinet with the razor blade disposal slot in the back? "
My first house (built in '27) had an old medicine cabinet with one of those. It also had two 24" fluorescent lamps, one on each side and it was chrome and white steel. It was beautiful but getting a pretty pitted and faded. We thought about restoring it and going retro with the whole bathroom but couldn't find enough stuff at the time to pull it off. I remember tearing out that wall to replace the do-it-yourself plastering job and finding a 2 pound slug of old, rusty razor blades and an old, empty Prince Albert tobacco can! Turned out both were worthless, but interesting.
My grandpa used this method sometimes. I remember as a kid (early 80's) helping my grandpa change the oil and he had me go pour out the old oil on the big pile of rocks. Hindsight today, that spot he poured it out was only 100' or so from his well.
He also reused the oil as chainsaw bar oil and lubrication on various old farm equipment.