Mineral Spirits
 

I've been soaking old parts like old bbs, headsets, etc., in mineral spirits for cleaning to be used on a bike build I'm working on. I have two small cups, about 1/4 cup each I have been soaking these items in. I'll also have to clean whatever derailluers I end up with as well. What do people do with the used-up, gunked-up mineral spirits? Do I pour it on some old wood and let it evaporatae outside? Or is that a no-no and I need to take it to my county's disposable drop off they have in the summer months here?

I give my used solvents and oil to a guy nearby who has an EPA-approved oil-burning furnace to heat his shop. That's what many waste collection companies do with it anyway. He'll take anything that will burn.

Whatever's left in their furnaces after the hydrocarbons have been burned off is their problem.

at my shop we just pour stuff into the used shop rag bag, this includes dot fluid from bleeds but dont tell anyone :3
you could probably take it to a local dump and see what they want you to do with it. something like used mineral spirits honestly isnt all that bad so they might just tell you to put it down the drain...

Doubtful that. It's not the spirits that's so bad it's what's in it that makes it unusable for pretty much any purpose other than burning it. At least used oil can be recycled, but it's not practical in the small amounts most folks accumulate over time.

I've left my used paint thinner and spirits settle out, then pour off the clear stuff for re-use. Leave what's left on newspaper to evaporate the VOC part, then once dry that goes to landfill. They accept paints that have been left to dry out in their cans, I don't see much difference – other than volume of waste – between the two.

Where I am the municipal waste authorities are pretty strict about what can and must not be put into the sewer system. Any significant volume of flammable material should be dealt with in a responsible manner when it comes to means for disposal.

I've heard London has a BIG problem with folks pouring used cooking oil into their sewers....

i guess theyre a lil more lax around here but pouring it down the drain felt so bad to do

I let it settle and decant the clean stuff off through a coffee filter. I then use the dirty stuff to start campfires. Occasionally if I don't have a fire to start I'll just dump it in with my drain oil that eventually goes to the dump for recycling. Charcoal lighter and mineral spirits aren't much different from each other.

Almost anything you do with it (apart from tipping it on the ground) is better than putting it down the drain. Save all your petrochemical waste in an old oil can and take it to the recycling centre.

I would find the nearest national park or protected wetlands and dump it there.


Citrus degreaser would be a better choice for next time.

I don't think so

put it in an old water jug painted blue and magic sharpie "PAHKS" on it in bold, slanted, block lettering.

leave it at the entrance to your local MUP. problem fixed itself.

You should dispose of it as hazardous waste. If you use citrus degreaser you should dispose of that as hazardous waste, including all the water rinses, as well. That said, pouring it into a pan and burning it off is not a bad idea as long as you do it safely and away from anything flammable. Burning small quantities of it are better than burning large quantities. If you can add something to wick the solvent up so that it burns a bit better, that’s a plus. A small angular chunk of concrete does the trick.

Do not, under any circumstances, pour it down any drain!

oh my god i got mineral spirits mixed up with denatured alcohol its called mineral oil around here. yes absolutely do not put mineral oil down the drain. put that into a gallon jug or something and take it to a dump

Exactly. Increases biodiversity.

No, that is not mineral oil. Mineral oil is closely related to mineral spirits with similar chemical composition. It just has larger molecules.

A small amount of petrochemical or other will contaminate a very large amount of water. Besides bad, BIG fines.

My bike solvent choice of late is mineral oil in form of tiki torch fuel with about 1% citronella, mostly full opened bottles are dirt cheap at goodwill store early fall. It's also a fairly benign bug spray, will kill roaches; STEM kid and pet safe bug spray is nearly identical, mineral oil with lemongrass oil and geraniol in a bit bigger percentage, but both are components of citronella, and the tiki fuel works. Looks the same, smells the same, works same. Evaporates very slowly, not volatile, so no more flammable than olive oil, both need a wick to burn. I use in my on-bike chain cleaner for oiled chain. Gonna switch back to wax soon after 20 years on oil.

i also use olive oil on my bike parts. Grant says next to beeswax, olive oil is king.

Yes.

Gotta say no. The whole point of a solvent to dissolve dirty oil (or wax) from a chain is to leave it clean. Using oil to dissolve oil doesn’t do the trick. It just leaves everything oily. Diesel oil, kerosene, mineral oil, etc. are all no volatile which means they are slow to evaporate. Mineral spirits does the same job but evaporates a little quicker, leaving behind a cleaner surface. Although mineral spirits are flammable, they do have a high flash point which makes them relatively safe to use compared to other solvents. They aren’t nontoxic but they don’t present a very high toxicity either.

In a pinch, I used olive oil to lube the reciprocating blades on an electric hair clipper. A month or two later, was buzzing but not cutting hair. Pulled apart blades, the olive oil had dried to a sticky gum. So I'd say no on that.

Mineral oil in the on-bike chain cleaner, left on chain for a day after, dries pretty good on outside (without any wiping, but I could easily do that), and it's compatible with the lube oil if any left inside the chain. Though I have plenty, last couple chain cleanings, I put magnet into the mineral oil after and withdrew all the metal particles, which is most of what causes the lube to thicken into an emulsion paste, and reused the mineral oil as solvent, simply because I didn't have a receptacle handy to dispose of the old oil. With either that or fresh mineral oil, it gets the chain pretty darned clean; I like to crank it 10 seconds, then leave it all soak for a while (where low volatility really helps) to dissolve more inside the bushings, crank again, done. The big reason I'm going back to wax is not the chain, but the rear derailleur pulleys, cogs, and chainrings get mucked with sludged oil over time, and the chain cleaner doesn't remedy, cleaning those is at least a half-day job, versus a couple minutes with the chain cleaner alone. Back to wax. It was always so clean.

since having noticed a poignant bouquet emitting from my riding pumps, i now saturate the cork innersoles with used, albeit filtered*, mineral spirits.

*pro-tip = dry out and shake your coffee maker filters to re-use for this.

I let the used mineral spirits settle - all the dirty stuff settles to the very bottom.

I pour off the clean stuff into a different container and reuse and repeat the settling process every time.

I collect the dirty stuff in a separate container which after a while will also show some settling so I can pour off the clear stuff into the "clean" containers.

The amount of contaminated stuff in the end is very minimal. It's such a relatively small amount that actually gets "ruined" by contamination after you let it settle out. I have yet to collect a pint of that stuff over a few years. When i do, I'll probably just burn it in the outdoor fire pit. Or take it to the place where they collect hazmat which is what I do with my old paint, outboard gear oil, etc.

What also works great for shoe odor is windex, or more cheaply, just household ammonia (I like with lemon) diluted with water. I used it diluted 9:1 for household cleaning, might require stronger for shoes. Last I had shoe odor, I still had window cleaner, a couple sprays into each shoe, it permeates inside as it evaporates, smell gone by morning. If insoles are removeable, best to do that and then spray in shoe and rinse or spray insoles. If you want exact concentration as window cleaner, there are recipes online, usually with a drop of soap in the bottle as a surfactant. No blue dye. I like no soap, as no need to rinse fabrics and carpet after cleaning, it all evaporates. Soap can actually feed mold, according to info on washing sails, they say soap must be rinsed out completely.

If you would go almost anywhere with your cuppa of dirty solvent, they will either laugh at you outright or will make you a but of jokes when you leave.

As said above, just pour the dirty solvent into a container in which most dirt and gunk will settle in several days or weeks, then pour off the clean solvent for second, third, fourth... use. Some stuff in solvent doesn't settle too fast like oil based paint does but you can use your fresh supply of solvent till it settles in your waste container. Use something with a lid but big enough opening so you can look into to check if you got clean solvent to pour off for another use.

Once in a longer while, spoon the sediments out to your garbage, you can let it dry before it gets carted away. You don't sound like one of these environmental eko-terrorist, just an honest citizen who is unsure what to do in today's crazed world, but if you were, I'd advise you contact your government for permit to dispose of your cuppa of solvent, they will send you some forms long as your arm to fill out, you get your commercial business identification number as your ID for the forms, then a crew of spacemen will arrive at your place in hazmat suits and use a remotely operated robot to carry out your container of dirty solvent into their hazardous waste disposal truck... but you risk that a completely different crew will arrive that will put you in a jacket that has zipper on the back... I mean, times are a changing, soon there will be a completely different government.

A decade ago while I was cleaning out the place we'd lived for 37 years, I'd accumulated a variety of what is now considered hazardous materials that I had to dispose of. Contacted local waste management provider, was told they have a free service for just that need. Have to schedule an appointment, when the guy showed up he simply looked at the cans I'd gathered together then started bagging them all according to what was inside and placing them in the back of the straight truck he was driving. Took maybe twenty minutes start to finish, I had maybe 15 or 16 containers of various liquids needing proper handling.

Later on I learned that they simply hand stuff like this over to a cement kiln not far away that combines all the hydrocarbons into the fuel they used to make cement out of limestone. 2,750°F does a fine job of dealing with pretty much anything hazardous.

Acids & alkalies can be combined (with care) to neutralize each other, how I saved myself $60 it otherwise would have cost me to leave two pounds of Sodium Carbonate at a local hazmat facility. Left over from my days of mixing darkroom chemicals from scratch back in the '60's & '70's, I needed only a gallon of hydrochloric acid (~ $12) to 'neutralize' what is otherwise a fairly strong alkali into common table salt and water: Na2CO3 + 2HCL > 2NaCl + CO2 + H2O

'Course the CO2 byproduct escaped off into the atmosphere so don't sic Greta on me pleaze... the salt water went down the drain, same as the discharge from everybody's water softener regeneration cycles.