Flocculant to settle rock dust in waste water?

[Jugglerguy]

I sort of hate the process of getting rid of waste water from tumbling and cabbing. My procedure uses two five-gallon buckets. I have a box that I buried in the woods behind my house that I dump all my waste water in. The soil is sandy, so it drains pretty well, but eventually the sand gets clogged by the rock dust and no longer drains. At that point, I scoop as much rock snot from the bottom of the hole as I can, dry it out, and throw it in the trash. Once I dug a new hole and moved my box over a couple of feet.

Here's my disposal box:


Since clogging is such a pain, I've started to be very careful about getting too much slurry in the hole. I scoop the water out of the top of my bucket, being careful not to disturb the bottom too much. Then I leave about six inches of water/sludge in the bucket. I then pour this into a second bucket and let the remaining slurry dry so I can put it in the trash. This takes almost a week inside the house in the winter. It's much faster in the summer sun.

One of the problems with my method is that I have to wait at least a day for the rock dust to settle before I dump the water from the top. I have noticed that when I empty tumblers that have been running Petoskey stone, the water settles so well that it's completely clear on the top. I am able to carefully scoop some out and dump it right down the drain. I would love it if I could do this with all of my slurry water. I just did a little Googling and found that there is something called a flocculant that does this. It can be purchased to use in pools to settle out solids in the water and make them float to the bottom. I wonder if this idea could be used to help my buckets settle faster or more completely. Heres' a video of how it works:


Do any of you have better methods for dealing with water? I know that many of you just dump it in your driveway or something, but my driveway is paved and I don't really want to look at a pile of sludge in my yard.

[NDK]

Rob, I'm just spitballing, but how about siphoning the water with a hose much like draining a fish tank. I'm thinking there may be better control from the sludge mixing since the pail would be stationary.

[micellular]

Y'all could get in and split up a 55-gallon drum of the good stuff.
www.wateronline.com/doc/concentrated-flocculant-0001

[Pat]

I dump water from my saw around thirsty looking plants. I figure the minerals are like vitamins.

[Erich]

I'm with pat and water the plants from the cabking waste water.

[Jugglerguy]

Jan 14, 2017 17:48:32 GMT -5 Pat said:

I dump water from my saw around thirsty looking plants. I figure the minerals are like vitamins.

I have borax in every bucket. The plants are buried under the snow right now anyhow.

[Pat]

Jan 14, 2017 18:25:45 GMT -5 Jugglerguy said:

Jan 14, 2017 17:48:32 GMT -5 Pat said:

I dump water from my saw around thirsty looking plants. I figure the minerals are like vitamins.

I have borax in every bucket. The plants are buried under the snow right now anyhow.

I figure none of your plants are ever thirsty in Michigan! Works here.

[Mark K]

Just keep dumping it in the hole. It doesn't matter if the stuff drain right away or not. Unless you are running a huge operation, you should never have to worry about overflowing that hellhole. If it froze up for the winter, use a 30 gal barrel and pout it in there. As the stuff serttles out it will become clear. Once it is clear you can siphon it out and down the drain. The borax is not going to hurt anything. In the spring you can carry the barrel out of the house and pour the stired up slury into the hellhole and be done with it.

[Deleted]

Jan 14, 2017 20:29:24 GMT -5 Mark K said:

Just keep dumping it in the hole. It doesn't matter if the stuff drain right away or not. Unless you are running a huge operation, you should never have to worry about overflowing that hellhole. If it froze up for the winter, use a 30 gal barrel and pout it in there. As the stuff serttles out it will become clear. Once it is clear you can siphon it out and down the drain. The borax is not going to hurt anything. In the spring you can carry the barrel out of the house and pour the stired up slury into the hellhole and be done with it.

I was Kinda thinking the same way. What does a slow percolation rate matter Rob?

Mark, is hellhole a technical term or your estimation of Robs box?

[Jugglerguy]

Jan 14, 2017 20:29:24 GMT -5 Mark K said:

Just keep dumping it in the hole. It doesn't matter if the stuff drain right away or not. Unless you are running a huge operation, you should never have to worry about overflowing that hellhole. If it froze up for the winter, use a 30 gal barrel and pout it in there. As the stuff serttles out it will become clear. Once it is clear you can siphon it out and down the drain. The borax is not going to hurt anything. In the spring you can carry the barrel out of the house and pour the stired up slury into the hellhole and be done with it.

The hole is about two feet deep and I did fill up the first one. It would barely drain enough before the next bucket went in. That's why I ended up moving the hole. Freezing has not been an issue. One winter it got down to twenty below and I only got a thin sheet of ice on the top.

[Peruano]

All the advice here has been good except that Borax won't hurt anything. I've heard that its toxic to plants and I can attest that I had an apricot tree perish unexpectedly after I had been pouring tumbling water on it that contained borax. I like others pour all my water from the grinders and vibes on plants (except if the water contains borax). No problem with other plants. Perhaps waste water from Petosky stones is higher in things besides calcium, and would be different, but I doubt it. When it doubt dig a bigger hole. Just thinking.

[Deleted]

Jan 15, 2017 10:15:48 GMT -5 Peruano said:

All the advice here has been good except that Borax won't hurt anything. I've heard that its toxic to plants and I can attest that I had an apricot tree perish unexpectedly after I had been pouring tumbling water on it that contained borax. I like others pour all my water from the grinders and vibes on plants (except if the water contains borax). No problem with other plants. Perhaps waste water from Petosky stones is higher in things besides calcium, and would be different, but I doubt it. When it doubt dig a bigger hole. Just thinking.

In the context of Mark saying "borax isn't going to hurt anything" he was suggesting siphoning cleared guilds down the drain. At least that is how I read it.

I don't use borax when I actually get to tumble. I don't see the utility.

[Mark K]

Scott is right. The borax is not going to hurt anything down the drain any more than if you used it to wash your skivvies.

And, a hellhole is the hole in the belly of, in my case, a Shithook helicopter. It is a big square hole which I guess the crew uses to see the hook up and the slingload.

[toiv0]

Boron is needed as a micro nutient in plant growth, there is not a lot of tolerance between a toxic amount and non toxic. As alway there are factors that control the amount available to the plants like organic matter and PH. Some plants need more than others like beets, broccoli, and rutabaga. Plants like creeping charlie or plants in the mint family you can use it as a herbacide. Boron is water souluable and usually if you have enough rainfall it resides below the root zone of most plants. If a soil is deficient the average dose is 2 to 3 lbs per acre or a few tablespons full per 1000 sq. ft of garden.

So if you are using boron in your tumbling and spreading it on your lawn you should be safe to use 10 tablespoons of borax which is about 1o percent boron per 1000 sq ft if my calculations are correct.

The little square box in the ground should be ok, I would see a problem of eventual failure though unless the soil is very permeable. The fine muck particles will fill in and seal the pore spaces and keep the pit from draining. When we make soil for greens and tees they are designed not to compact and drain about 16 inches plus per hour. Just a few percentage points in silt and clay (less than 7 percent by weight is ok) will cause them to fail.

[toiv0]

We set up a horizontal classifier for FRAC sand operation. This machine with the wash plant used 3000 plus gallons per minute on a closed water supply. (settling ponds) Because we had to reuse the water we injected a flocculent into the waste water. This worked really well to drop out the fines out of the water and cleaned it up enough by the time it got back to our intake it was clean enough. I clicked on one of the articles above and it said the flocculent wasn't toxic to fish, ours was. It caused the fish to act drunk which in turn clogged our intake screen which caused the motor and pump to fail which cost us 20,000 dollars plus. I think flocculent is a great resource to drop your solids out of your tumbler waste. There is some great Youtube videos on showing how it works to clarify water.

[Jugglerguy]

Thanks toiv0. I might give it a try. What does FRAC stand for? Do you mean natural gas fracking?

[toiv0]

Jan 16, 2017 6:47:20 GMT -5 Jugglerguy said:

Thanks toiv0 . I might give it a try. What does FRAC stand for? Do you mean natural gas fracking?

Fracking sand for the oil industry. A very specialized silica sand that is naturally round and crush resistant. We were screening out anything above 40 grit whis was very little and everything 20 mesh and below went to the settling pond, which was over 25 percent. They sell the overs for bedding for dairy cows. For some reason they like to lay on it and it keeps them cleaner. Maybe its like a day at the holstein beach. I wonder if it has use in our hobby. Here is a good article on it. 

geology.com/articles/frac-sand/

[Deleted]

Rob,

May I suggest an experiment?

Dilute a small amount of white glue. Elmer's school glue is what I am thinking of. Maybe 1-2% then add that to a small portion of cloudy slurry.

Report the results. Did it flocculate?

I'm visualizing replicating of the video with Elmer's.

Jugglerguy

[Mark K]

Jan 16, 2017 8:21:06 GMT -5 toiv0 said:

Jan 16, 2017 6:47:20 GMT -5 Jugglerguy said:

Thanks toiv0 . I might give it a try. What does FRAC stand for? Do you mean natural gas fracking?

Fracking sand for the oil industry. A very specialized silica sand that is naturally round and crush resistant. We were screening out anything above 40 grit whis was very little and everything 20 mesh and below went to the settling pond, which was over 25 percent. They sell the overs for bedding for dairy cows. For some reason they like to lay on it and it keeps them cleaner. Maybe its like a day at the holstein beach. I wonder if it has use in our hobby. Here is a good article on it. 

geology.com/articles/frac-sand/

That St Peter sandstone in the article is all over the place here. It is what Our sand boxes were filled with.

[Jugglerguy]

Jan 16, 2017 13:19:01 GMT -5 @shotgunner said:

Rob,

May I suggest an experiment?

Dilute a small amount of white glue. Elmer's school glue is what I am thinking of. Maybe 1-2% then add that to a small portion of cloudy slurry.

Report the results. Did it flocculate?

I'm visualizing replicating of the video with Elmer's.

Jugglerguy

I'll give that a try. Right now I have Petoskey stone water that settles out quickly. I'll try when I get some more typical dirty water. Is there a reason you think this will work?