Waste Management, a drum of dust to get rid of!

[Besser]

OK,

I need ideas for disposal of swarf/dust. Say I have a drum full of it, apart from a hole in the ground, burning or in the bin, what do we do with it. Lets assume some different materials.

MDF?
Treated wood (cca pine for example)?
Natural dried timber?

I can think of many options for small quantities but what about bins of it?

[KenC]

Its a nuisance but its important to dispose em responsibly.
For natural dried wood, you can make compost by mixing domestic garbage 50/50. I've seen organic farmers mixing 20% to soil straight. I've even seen fish farmers mixing ~5% to their fish feed as dietary fiber.

MDF & treated wood, they contain preservatives/poison which kills bio-organism, not suitable for composting.

[Besser]

I know a worm farm so I'll give them a call re the natural dried timber.

[normand blais]

There are different concrete mix using wood waiste http://www.durisolbuild.com/material.shtml
http://www.unbc.ca/media/2007/09_concrete.html

[MetalHead]

I wonder if it could be mixed back in to make more MDF ???? Or used in making OSB ....

[astrolavista]

What about mixing it with a binder of some sort and extruding it into logs for wood stoves..

[KenC]

Briquette them & sell as fire wood.
Anyone familiar with small scale briquette machine?

[normand blais]

Or you can make a pykrete boat
http://www.combinedops.com/Pykrete.htm

[domino11]

I just pack it into old disposable coffee cups and burn it in my woodstove.

[servant74]

What about mixing it with a binder of some sort and extruding it into logs for wood stoves..

The wood pellet stoves use that. They grind up the wood to a powder, then add water as a binder and extrude it like you do sausage. It is almost dry when they extrude it and it gets cut off into pellet lengths as it exits the extruder.

In a life long ago, we took the daily newspapers, rolled them up and tied them tight, soaked them in water, then set them out to dry. We burned them in our fire place as 'home made logs'. Doing something similar with the sawdust.

[servant74]

Oh yea, in my local area folks that grow tobacco take saw dust and bark slabs from local saw mills and feed the fires in their tobacco curing barns. (Middle TN area, near Nashville)

Most of the tobacco here is 'smokeless', used for chewing, snuff, etc. not leaves for cigars or cigarettes.

[Besser]

I think you'll find burning MDF is bad as it releases formaldehyde. A study is CA showed a 5% mdf blend into compost reduced the formaldehyde by 98%. Problem is I don't have enough compost.

[KenC]

Besser, if you can burn at over 1200 deg C, you won't get any poisonous fume. BUT its easier said then done in reality.

Dirt & soil are compost in natural form, compost is just another buzz word, use dirt or soil to mix with your mdf dust & you will have similar effect. emmm.... now it looks like burrying...

[javeria]

you can probably dump it and mix with construction sand - or in vast mud grounds, hmmm
just a suggestion. I don't know what to do with mine either - though I have heard people collect it make to make more mdf.

[Surfcnc]

Hi Besser

I normally just lurk and read but this thread needed a more direct response for the forum readers in general.

Some general rules to apply to any production process are to produce as little waste as possible and what waste you do produce make sure it is benign as possible.
While convenient, mixing dust (or any waste) tends to make disposal that much more difficult downstream.

While the focus of this thread is solely upon the dust waste from the mechmate milling process, it is important from a waste management perspective to manage all the waste from the process.
The CCA, MDF and timber off cuts should be managed with equal vigor to the dust.
Using less board in the first place by nesting parts is a classic example of technology being employed to reduce waste and improve efficiency.

Some Cautionary Notes

Under no circumstances burn CCA timber or its dust that has been reproceesed back in to pellets or log products.
Here in Australia the only safe method for disposal of CCA product at the end of it's life is pit burial.
Working with CCA dust as a minimum you should wear protective clothing and a respirator.
Clothing used during the production process should be washed separately from the general washing.

Why is CCA such a problem?

Chromium is part of a general grouping called heavy metals. These tend to be stable and persistent both in the environment and the body.
The very thing that makes it such a good wood preservative makes it bad for us, that is, the toxicity and its persistence.
Chromium comes in many different forms but you can assume the type in CCA is the deadly type.
It acts as a mutagen, literally changing the DNA that it comes into contact with.
The end result of this change can of course be cancers such as lung or liver cancer if unlucky enough.

Solutions

Always disliked the problem with out the solution so my I suggest cutting untreated timber and having it preserved after shaping.
Much healthier and no CCA dust.
Here in Australia CCA is very difficult to purchase as private individual.
The only pathway here is to have one of the many timber preserving companies that make the product in the first place do it for you.
The other option is to use wood preservatives that are available locally and maybe a bit less toxic in the first place. Boron and copper tend to be used these days.
Once you have ceased cutting pretreated CCA products it is probably time to clean down the workplace and just deal with "Normal" dust.

What to do with the dust?

Wet it to reduce resuspension of the dust into the air and make it suitable for disposal through traditional waste transfer processes.
There is nothing wrong with having waste end up in a dump or landfill.
The reason being that it is in a managed site and the location of the site is known.
The other option is that the waste is mixed into the soil or sent into the air and no one knows where it is or how to avoid it.

[Jan de Ruyter]

Here is another method for getting rid of the waste:

http://gekgasifier.pbworks.com/How-to-Build-and-Run-the-GEK-Gasifier

Perfectly within the capabilities of a MechMate builder.

[Besser]

Jan. I like it, how does the formaldehyde react?

[Jan de Ruyter]

I'm not qualified to give you a definitive answer, but formaldehyde is CH2O. It is manufactured using methanol (wood alcohol) or as we know it, methylated spirits aka Blou trein, which is poisonous to ingest and causes neural damage. Before petrol (gasoline on the other side of the pond) became widely used as a fuel for cars, they ran on methanol. The Mobil Pegasus sign was a relic of that era.

MDF contains urea-formaldehyde as part of the glue.

According to the MSDS, the flash point is 56deg Celsius, in other words it will burn quite easily. The recommended disposal method for formaldehyde is incineration.

So without giving the scientific answer, the formaldehyde will decompose, as it is also a naturally occurring substance. It should be dangerous to burn inside your house.

The real question is whether it can be safely burnt in a gasifier as burning natural wood also gives of formaldehyde and if these increased quantities from the MDF are meaningful and pose any danger.

In addition, it will be wise to have sufficient ventilation in your shop if you store MDF, as these fumes will build up inside an unventilated area.

Nasty stuff.

[Besser]

Worm Farm didnt like the idea of MDF chips.

I looked into mixing with concrete....no takers

Looks like it's going to be land fill