Waste disposal of HAAS tank and the blue barrel of death

Attached is one quote for the disposal of the cutting fluids. A subsequent email I got from them was that they would NOT drain the tank because of what might be in there (metal chips). They would want us to drain the tank into a barrel (included in the quote) and then they would remove it. All and all quite pricey but it IS something we’ll have to do.

36577-Dallas Makerspace.pdf (36.4 KB)

If anyone knows of a reputable firm (not someone who is going to bury it in a field :rofl:) that can dispose of these, please let us know soon. thanks!

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so… for the ignorami such as myself…
Is this going to cost us:
the first time
the stop charge + the drop off drum charge.

Followed by
the stop charge + the cutting fluid charge/drum + the coolant charge/drum + drop off empty drum charge (for next time) each time we need it done?
How often does this appear to happen?
Anybody know a CNC shop we could “throw in with” for a nominal fee (i.e. give THEM the “stop charge” to include our 1 barrel every 12 months along with their 8 barrels/month “normal” schedule)? :smile:

On the other hand… Annually (which is how often I’m guessing this needs done) it isn’t relay THAT bad…

I don’t that’s expensive at all compared to some of the others I’ve seen.

@TLAR did you have someone that would do it as well?

I guess we would have to pump that material through some filters to ensure there are no metal particles.

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Thanks for doing the leg work Nick, I think it looks pretty reasonable considering the problem.

Do we have enough room in the barrel for the old fluid in the HAAS?

I’d have to say no. It’s about 3/4 full (of 50 gal) and the haas tank is an additional 50.

you’re quite right. I was told to expect it in the $700 range. Some are triple that.
Maybe we could load it into 50 paint cans and wait until the city has a ‘get rid of old paint’ day. <- just kidding!!!

each and every time.

I don’t know that they would come as low due to the lack of volume the makerspace has (we had a 275gal tote and were collecting mop water, coolant, waste water from the wet collector, etc… and pumping out every 2 weeks) but when I was getting quotes SafetyKleen was by far the best value at around $1 per gallon and a trip charge of about $100. They did pull an initial sample that i think cost $350 to analyze, but as long as a whole year doesnt lap between pump outs that’s a one time charge.

I also provided the city of Carrollton with the SDS of the coolant my company was using and walked them through our processes. They detemined so long as we removed the solids and tramp oils, and maintained and recorded acceptable pH levels(5-10), that particular cutting fluid was OK to go down the drain.

Can you have science build you a centrifuge or blacksmithing build an evaporator and separate that water from your oil to minimize disposal?:sunglasses:

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thank you. I’ll see if I can get a quote from them.

well the blue barrel has been around a LONG time, and we’ve never pumped the haas tank in my time here. So I’m guessing we won’t make that requirement.

So we can’t combine barrel drop with pickup?

they are not exactly going to wait around while we fill it. they want to just be able to come and get it.

But they come with an empty. Take a full (that’s been sitting there for a year, gorging). One stop charge, right? Except the initial barrel drop stop.

What Andrew means (I think) is can we pick the barrel up & bring it to the space. Then we can pump the “waste” into the new drum for pickup.

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they are “The largest machine shop at the Los Alamos National Laboratory”
their budget might be a wee bit bigger than ours to do that. :star_struck:

I’ll dig up the folks I was going to use for the mystery fluids in the past.

what size is your barrel of juice? a guess will work…

The barrel is 50 gallons and so is the haas tank
Thank you

I have many new oil filters that we can use to filter it. Only have them because it was cheaper to buy it as a package than oil and my filter of choice.

Fortunately most metals don’t float so only the last inch or so of the tank would be problematic

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Nick, Tim, other good folks involved in this…

When would you like the juice removed?
I have a shop that will “absorb” the cost if his service doesn’t alter their current rate - based on what is in your juice.
This would require me taking the fluid in containers to his shop - do,you have spares to use in the mean time?

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The blue barrel is self contained and is made up of cooling fluids and old hydraulic oil. The haas tank is all coolant but it will probably contain metal shavings at the bottom of the tank. The majority of the coolant should be able to be siphoned safely. Unfortunately we don’t have a spare barrel but those should not be too hard to acquire

I noticed the blue drum boiling/steaming off water vapor last night.

I understand the need to get the waste oil in a condition that we can properly dispose of it but boiling off the water in the way we are doing it is not a great idea.


I am not sure what specific oil we are using but all the MSDS sheets I looked at had the same general gist.

From reading MSDS sheets it seems like there is no acute health risk from the oil vapor that is being released. However it seems that there is a long term ambient exposure limit.

I think the correct way of handling the oil vapor is to exhaust it outside or otherwise capture the oil vapor. Here are some possible ways of doing that:

  1. Tie into Fired Art’s exhaust system. This could be done with a long flexible hose or by moving the drum into Fired Art’s area and tieing into their system.

  2. Tie into Laser’s exhaust system. This could be done by moving the drum into laser’s area and tieing into their system.

  3. Bubble the vapor through a water bath.

Considering that this is not going to be a long term issue. I’d surmise we would likely be just fine :slight_smile: