Karlīs Rebreather Page

Disposal of used Scrubber Chemicals

When you think about waste disposal there are mainly three things to care about:

  1. the Image of the diving community
  2. the material you are handling and the state you are disposing it in
  3. Your safety.

When you think and act correctly this leads you to fulfilling the governmental laws.

  1. Do not dispose your used chemical wild, you are a nature conservationist, no stupid smoker who lets his waste fall wherever he stands. You are the one who knows what he handles, when you dump it wild this might cause serve cost to find out what this miscellaneous "chemical waste" is. So then you dump limestone (Ca(OH)2 + CO2 CaCO3 + H2O = limestone + water(/steam)): dump it in a way nobody gets scared or bothered. Take care of proper marking, don't mark things dangerous that are not (or no longer) dangerous, in order not to unintentional cause expensive decontamination operations, started by a rambler who finds a chemical canister.
     
  2. Know what you are handling and take care that it means no risk for someone else. Rebreather-Scrubbers are used with a certain safety margin, so then you unload the canister the chemical still has some potential. It is a good idea to passivate the used stuff before it leaves your area of influence, especially when you use gas generator chemicals like the magic "O-3" from Russia.
     
  3. Take care to prevent that not You or somebody else could think Your used Breathing-Lime might be fresh one. Dump the used one in Waste-Bags, not in Things like Lime Delivery-Packages or similar, a Mistake could cause a deadly Accident!
    Run mandatory a technical log (Geraetebegleitheft) in which You note every usage of this Rebreather, every Limefill, every Gasfill, every Maintenance and so on without delay!

 

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http://Rebreather.de/rebreather/trash.htm © Karl Kramer, May 1999