Ammonium Persulfate disposal

[jimandy]

Guess the FBI Journal got blown up in a freak explosion.

heh heh

[Chris Smith]

No its there, just not for those who dont know how to retrieve. Woof woof

[zotdoc]

Hi Engineer, care to share where the cheap source of AP is? I'm paying thru the nose at the electronics supply places! Thanks

[philba]

at the risk of prolonging this nutty thread...

I've bought it at Frys for about $16 a kilo. Online it's more like $18 but shipping is around 6-7 iirc. It sure would be nice to find a cheaper source.

By the way, with my hotplate, I reduced my last spent batch to a very pretty blue mass of copper sulfate crystals. Kind of neat looking...

[Chris Smith]

I like those blue things in my fire works and BANG projects!

[humina]

I can't believe I spent the last 20 minutes reading this thread. I just wanted to know if I should use ammonium persulfate and how to dispose of it if I did. Instead I got the rambling madness that is Chris accusing everyone and their mother that they have google degrees.

Why would I listen to someone who claims to have a huge pile of experience and the "experience" he claims is: the FBI has 1 super secret report that nobody is allowed to see, you have to trust Chris that it exists, that says that the FBI thinks Chris might know something. I wish I could reach through the internet and hit Chris with a google degree.

[MrAl]

Hi there,

I can see you are new to this forum, so welcome!

Being so, i should tell you that Chris got banned from this forum some
time ago so he doesnt post here anymore.
My personal experience with him was that he had a wealth of information
to share but unfortunately he was a bit impatient with people who didnt
agree with him, and this was egged on even more by the angry mob

[haklesup]

There are safer and easier to obtain etches for Cu so I would just avoid it if I could.

The best answer to suit your local laws is to call your local Haz-Mat disposal line for your local dump. In many cases you can find the telephone number on your city website or on the side of the garbage truck on dump day.

For uncontaminated small quantities, I wouldn't be surprised if you could just dilute it with lots of water and use it as fertilizer (though I am not telling you to do that)

For any quantity contaminated with anything like Cu, then follow my first advise and call, they should have a local household waste disposal day. Worse case, you pay a haz-mat company to take it away and that's what you would need to do if you had a large quantity.

Here is the MSDS, note it is not all that flammable but proper storage of the crystals is important
http://www.sciencelab.com/xMSDS-Ammoniu ... te-9922930

[Engineer1138]

The really funny thing is that I bowed out of this thread pretty early. In fact when it just came back up I had no recollection of starting it

Anyway, with PC boards so cheap now (I found a site that will do 100 boards of about 1.5sq in for $70!!!), I don't bother making my own any longer. Just outsource it to China

[Bob Scott]

I can't believe I spent the last 20 minutes reading this thread. I just wanted to know if I should use ammonium persulfate and how to dispose of it if I did.

I am assuming that etchants work similarly. They make the standard ferric Chloride solution. Remembering back on my high school chemistry experience, I think it works this way:

Chloride would rather combine with copper than iron, so as it etchs, the solution becomes copper chloride and the metallic iron precipitates out. The reaction is exothermic so it's spontaneous.

Most techs used to just dump the exhausted solution down the drain while keeping the tap turned on to heavily dilute it so it does not damage pipes. I think that before you dump it down the drain, you should carefully feed it aluminum. The same reaction occurs as before. The solution will become aluminum chloride and metallic copper precipitates out. Heck, a high volume business could sell the copper dust for scrap, seeing as how copper prices have risen lately.

The etchant will then be at a lower energy level than before, and much less likely to corrode anything, unless a more reactive metal exists. Uh, it has something to do with electronegativity of the element.

I think ammonium persufate works the same way, only it doesn't stain your clothes. I don't know if the end product is poisonous, but I wouldn't dump it in the sewer in a city that uses recycled water.