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://diqn32j8nouaz.cloudfront.net...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.
Nothing like putting it back where it came from! :)
Sadly in this country there aren't hydrocarbon conversion plants using the Fischer-Tropsch process on large scale, as South Africa developed (http://sasol.com) when the world boycotted S.A. under Apartheid.
I knew a shop that would drip the used oil on a fire brick in their wood stove for heat.
Carl.
After the fires were finally extinguished in Kuwait a huge area in the desert was slick with a thick coating of the spilled oil When we first arrive there in 2003 the ground was still black out there by the time we left in 2013 a lot of that area was showing signs of sparse vegetation taking root the oil was slowly being broken down by the UV rays of the sun and the sparse rainfall into enzymes adding nutrients into sand that had never grown anything.
On our family farm when I was a kid, we poured our old oil along the fence rows for weed control. Years later we noticed that had backfired horribly as grass and weeds grew faster along there the oils had been poured than anywhere else.
Given enough time nature will correct all of man's mistakes it just takes longer to break down the many additives put in motor oils
Tom was on it...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPrAuF2f_oI
That's a really good idea. Most shops around here have bespoke waste oil burners. Basically free heat all winter.Quote:
Originally Posted by carl blum
That's really interesting about the motor oil for vegetation control. It was common to spray oil on dirt roads for dust control when I used to work in the Alberta oil patch. It worked really well.Quote:
Originally Posted by Frank S
So interesting story. In about 2008 there was a big forest fire here. Fire crews used foam to help put out the fire. Normally after a fire all the vegetation is supercharged, and you can practically watch it growing. Not after the foam. Absolutely nothing grew for the first dozen or so years, and it has only recently started to turn green. Whatever was in that foam really did a number on the soil, and what's more worrying is that it's persistent.
Times Beach in Missouri sprayed used oil on their roads to control dust. The oil was contaminated with Dioxin and the site is now a State Park.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_Beach,_Missouri
Our neighbor's garage/barn caught on fire last week. (according to the fire department the garage door opener started it). There is a row of pine trees next to the burring building. When the FD got there, they raised their ladder and sprayed the whole row of trees with AFFFQuote:
Originally Posted by nova_robotics
( https://www.consumernotice.org/environmental/afff/).
They also used it in the building. Then after that they told he he could not used the 4 cords of firewood they sprayed the foam on. Then when cling up they drained the tank in the truck out on the ground when the foam additive in it. Or course it ran all along the ditch on the road to the creek. The vegetation in the ditch ir already dying and al of the trees, even those not affected my the heat of the fire, are turning brown.
It will be interesting to see what happens as time passes.
I don't trust that article. It attempts to use big science-y words to sound scary by opening with "AFFF contains water and other chemical components, including ethylene and propylene glycol". Ethylene is produced biologically and is given off by plants and required to ripen fruit. It's why you don't store your bananas in bags or containers. The bananas gas out ethylene, which causes the other bananas to ripen faster. You need to let that escape if you want your bananas to keep longer. And propylene glycol is a food grade additive that's in half the stuff you eat including ice cream. Not exactly agent orange. So... this article is not off to a good start.Quote:
Originally Posted by hemmjo
Quote:
Originally Posted by nova_robotics
You are correct that FOOD GRADE, Propylene Glycol is not toxic. It is actually used as a bowel cleaner in preparation for a colonoscopy. However, while Ethylene is a naturally occurring compound, Ethelyne Glycol is very toxic. Old antifreeze used to be a very good way to kill mice in a barn. The love the sweet taste and it destroys their liver. Modern antifreeze has a battering agent in it so it is not so tasty! The BAD stuff in the AFFF are the PFAS.
From the article..."PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a group of widely-used, man-made chemicals that are likely all around you. They are sometimes called “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down, and they can accumulate in both the environment and the human body. Studies have found that PFAS may cause serious health problems, including cancer."
There is a reason that so many young people are getting cancer and other diseases so young. I personally believe things like this are part of the reason. We are poisoning our home planet.
But there's no ethylene glycol in the AFFF.Quote:
Originally Posted by hemmjo
Okay lets slow down here. PFAS are inert, and that's why they don't break down. They don't chemically react with anything. So it's bad that they're polluting everything, but if they don't react then you need to look at another mechanism to cause cancer. They literally don't react and that's what makes them last forever. Like asbestos; it's inert and doesn't react, so how does it cause cancer? The particles are very sharp and cause tissue damage over and over for a long period of time, which can eventually develop into cancer. But PFAS are not sharp, so what mechanism causes cancer? Well PFAS are classified a "2B carcinogen" which is defined as "Limited or no evidence in humans. Limited or insufficient evidence in animals." Basically someone has a hypothesis but there's no evidence and/or it hasn't been tested. I would strongly suspect that PFAS have negative health effects but end up not being carcinogenic, mainly due to their unreactivity. To put this into perspective, red meat is a 2A carcinogen, and a 2A classification is a lot worse than 2B.Quote:
Originally Posted by hemmjo
Respectfully.Quote:
Originally Posted by nova_robotics
For the sake of this discussion, it is very important to note that the word “inert” is often misunderstood and widely miss used. For example, the inert, also called noble, gasses are commonly said to be inert. As scientists continue to press the envelope of understanding, we are learning they are not truly inert.
To paraphrase from “Chemical and Engineering News” ;
Instead, one might describe the noble gases as aloof. Because they’re reluctant to share electrons from their filled outer electron shells, noble gases are generally considered un-reactive. But it is possible to wrestle reactivity from these elements, as the late chemist Neil Bartlett showed in 1962, when he made the first noble-gas compound, Xe[PtF6], by mixing xenon with platinum hexafluoride.
This is not the only “inert” material to have been successfully combined with other elements. There is Sodium halide, which is Sodium and Helium. There is AuNe which is Gold and Neon. There are others. I am not making this stuff up.
https://chemistry-europe.onlinelibra...open.201800257
The point is, many items are said to be inert, when they are not. The forever chemicals, PFAS, are definitely not inert. They are called “forever chemicals” because they break down very slowly under “normal” environmental conditions. Under extreme conditions, like fires, they can easily break down into very different compounds.
Teflon was said to be safe, and maybe it is when used properly. No one from Dupont bothered to tell us that when overheated, Teflon begins breaking down and releasing toxic gases and smaller chemical fragments. Such decomposition starts when cookware with PTFE coatings reaches temperatures of 500 degrees Fahrenheit or more. Is there anyone here who has NEVER let a skillet overheat on the stove?
The PFAS chemicals are dangerous because we really do not know enough about them. You can read about this for yourself.
https://www.questhealth.com/articles...rom-here.html?
A short clip from that page;
After reviewing existing research and large-scale studies in areas heavily contaminated with PFAS,⁶⁻⁹ the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) determined that there’s sufficient evidence of an association between high PFAS exposure and an increased risk for³:
• Lower immune system response (children and adults)
• Unhealthy levels of cholesterol or fats in the blood (children and adults)
• Decreased infant and fetal growth
• Kidney cancer (adults)
It is difficult to get valid information about the products we use everyday. Corporations hide valuable information and feed us BS about how “safe” their products are. Just one example, tetraethyl lead. https://www.biobasedpress.eu/2018/11...never-erupted/
This is the view from my perspective.