[ale] Off Topic, hard drive shredder

[Geoffrey Myers]

Charles Shapiro wrote:
> Argh.  I realize all too well that flourescents are hazardous waste. The 
> problemo is that there is no simple way for a private individual to get 
> rid of them legally.

There is a guy over in Kennesaw who will recycle them.  I've not made my 
way over there yet as I'm collecting a few first.  You have to contact 
him to make sure he's there to drop them off.

> 
> -- CHS
> 
> 
> On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 11:42 AM, planas <jslozier at gmail.com 
> <mailto:jslozier at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     __
>     Hi
> 
> 
>     On Fri, 2011-08-05 at 09:35 -0400, Jeff Hubbs wrote:
>>     On 8/5/11 12:47 AM, Sparr wrote:
>>     > I've recently come into possession of a large security disintegrator,
>>     > designed for shredding things like hard drives and tapes and such. I'm
>>     > trying to figure out what to do with it. Selling it is, of course, an
>>     > option, but I was thinking of possibly starting up a small security
>>     > business to destroy hard drives for people. Is there a market for that
>>     > in Atlanta?
>>     It would make a big difference if your apparatus of mindless destruction 
>>     were mobile.  But you are going to have a waste stream like nobody's 
>>     business; some of that will be leaded solder, which is toxic.  One thing 
>>     you could certainly do without too much difficulty would be to separate 
>>     out the ground-up magnets; run the refuse past a piece of iron that gets 
>>     scraped off periodically.  I don't know what all the composition of disk 
>>     drive magnets would be in the field - I'd suspect samarium cobalt and 
>>     neodymium.  What you recover could potentially be press-formed into 
>>     fairly decent magnets, suitable for electricity generation, but as far 
>>     as actually separating out the metals into bulk material with a net 
>>     positive value, I dunno.
>>
>>     Possessing this device only makes sense if it's actively being used, so, 
>>     congratulations on having entered the waste processing business! :)
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>     Once you grind up the hard drive you could attempt to recover the
>     metals present using a combination of physical and chemical methods.
>     The metals should be a reasonable purity to sell .
> 
>     If limited metal recovery is done you probably will have D- series
>     (unless the EPA has a specific classification) hazardous waste. I do
>     not know the current prices for hazardous waste disposal. But when I
>     was handling waste disposal I found there was roughly a 10x
>     difference between the charges of non-hazardous waste and a
>     hazardous waste.
> 
>     Off topic stupidity, most people do not realize that fluorescent
>     lights should be disposed as a hazardous waste - mercury is the culprit.
> 
>     -- 
>     Jay Lozier
>     jslozier at gmail.com <mailto:jslozier at gmail.com>
> 
> 
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> 
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-- 
Until later, Geoffrey

"I predict future happiness for America if they can prevent
the government from wasting the labors of the people under
the pretense of taking care of them."
- Thomas Jefferson