Proper disposal of dirty IPA as far as EPA or hazardous material requirements

Oh come on, the amount of resin in the IPA is trivial.

By the way I throw CFL bulbs in the trash as the amount of mercury ( a natural element) is about the same amount as the tip of a ballpoint pen.

Whether it be waste IPA with dilute resin in it, or CFL’s; I’m not going to waste time, money, energy and creating pollution just to dump minute amounts stuff that Colonfornia claims will cause cancer, birth defects, 1950’s ‘B’ movie mutations, etc ad nauseum.

The solution to pollution is dilution.

Thanks for your reply.

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If you read back through the thread you’ll see I said basically what you’re saying. Just pointing out it is not only IPA that’s going down the drain…

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While IPA on its own is relatively benign, other components of the resin may be harmful to the environment and there are better means of disposal that shouldn’t require too much of a time investment on your part. One of the easier methods is to leave your IPA in the sun and allow the resin to precipitate out of the solution. Most of the resin can then be filtered out of the IPA.

We do hire a disposal service given the volume we of IPA we go through though we recognize that this isn’t realistic for all users. We’re continuously working on ways to make waste and consumable disposal easier for customers and more friendly for the environment.

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Good point Frew. If I went through lots of IPA I’d consider a different disposal approach; but in my case I only need to get rid of few milliliters at a time. It makes no sense for me to drive 10 - 20 miles to find somewhere to dispose of it like I would used motor oil. The amount of dilute resin in the IPA is so trivial that dumping it on the ground results in the sunlight turning it into inert material.

Just curious about the “few milliliters” you mentioned. Are you primarily printing tiny little parts and then spraying them with some IPA?

I ask because most of us use the tanks which are part of the cleaning station, and those hold at least 2 liters each. So if by few you mean 2000 ml or more, then yeah…

Yeah… not really. I wouldn’t call an 8" cube of resin Jello, “trivial”.

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I print parts of all sizes and I use the wash station. I have yet to dump the contents and replace them with fresh IPA. When I do I will dispose of it the way I have mentioned. 2 - 4 liters of IPA with dilute resin in it is trivial. So is an 8" resin Jell-O cube. It’s not like dumping a 55-gallon drum of nasty nuclear waste in a stream or contributing to the resin equivalent of a waste tire dump. It all boils down to a common sense disposal method for the quantity and type of material being disposed of.

Out of curiosity; how do you think the IPA and resin would be disposed of if taken to a recycling center? More than likely the IPA will be burned off and the resin ground up if even that and just buried. That’s no different than my method of letting it evaporate or burn it off and toss the cured Jell-O block in the trash. The big difference is I don’t have to waste time, money, and fuel driving to and from the recycling center.

By the way, you haven’t lived until you’ve had to clean up 5-gallons of hot hydraulic oil used in a tractor off the concrete garage floor because the pan tipped over while taking it out from under the tractor. That’s an all afternoon messy job.

Yeah… not really. I wouldn’t call an 8" cube of resin Jello, “trivial”.

but if you mixed this Jello with water and set it in the sun to harden the resin you would see just how little resin was actually included.

you could probably pour it into a tray and let it evaporate and then send the remains to the dump.

Thanks mjncad for your response!
I’ve just moved to the US for a new branch office of Apknite and I’ve got a couple of bags of paper towels stained with resin and a couple of empty bottles that the resin came in. I tried to find a proper way to dispose of this stuff in the US and your answer help me a lot!

Same here, I use the stuff for weed killer on the interlocking paving bricks on my driveway.

"Oh come on, the amount of resin in the IPA is trivial.
no, it isnt. the tiniest traces of this stuff, parts per billion, is enough to wipe out entire marine ecosystems as it affects animals reproductive processes, once it flows down past your weeds and into the water table and makes its way into rivers and the ocean.
remember alex jones screaming “theyre putting chemicals in the water that turn the frogs gay”? well firstly he was 100% correct, and this is the same type of chemical as the atrazine that he was referring to (its an Endocrine Disrupting Chemical)

By the way I throw CFL bulbs in the trash as the amount of mercury ( a natural element) is about the same amount as the tip of a ballpoint pen.
this kind of person is why we cant have nice things, and everything gets banned in the end. you should be banned from using any kind of toxic chemicals. you are already on the list for a jail term if you are identified.

The solution to pollution is dilution."
this is like saying “if i mix a few handfuls of cotton balls in my machine gun, then the bullets wont harm you”…
this has got to be the lowest-iq’d person on this site.

pouring this into the environment is a MAJOR problem and should be treated like nuclear waste.
hell, nuclear waste can actually be extracted from the environment, this stuff cannot.

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