Drilling Dust

Thread from IPC's ComplianceNet
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 1998 15:31:11 -0800
Reply-To: brad@afiweb.com
Sender: ComplianceNet Mail Forum
From: Brad Hoium
Organization: AFI
Subject: Drilling Dust

Is anybody recycling drilling dust? Ours contains no gold and nobody I contacted locally wants it because it is too dusty. It probably would not be cost effective to send it a long distance. The result is that we send it to an industrial landfill.

I would be interested what others are doing with this material.

Date: Thu, 15 Jan 1998 09:44:59 EST
Reply-To: "ComplianceNet Mail Forum." , lwilmot@HADCO.COM
Sender: ComplianceNet Mail Forum
From: lwilmot@HADCO.COM
Subject: Re: Drilling Dust
X-To: brad@afiweb.com
Brad,
Besides the demonstration of an expedited delisting of our F006 sludge, another integral part of our Project XL project is to see if we can cost effectively recycle copper bearing dusts, whether they be from drilling, edging or sawing. We will determine if the cost saved by managing a delisted WWT sludge is enough to start recycling the copper dusts. We've committed to recycling $ for $ all the dust that we can cost justify.

What we've found in trial evaluation with some recyclers is that our dusts are about 10% copper, and that the most cost effective means of transporting and recycling them is in "super sack" type containers. (This is also true for dried sludge.) With this type of packaging, you can avoid the dust exposure issue both on our end and the recycler's end.We envision that without RCRA dictates on the WWT sludge, that we can commingle these two copper rich commodities and minimize shipment costs by shipping full truckloads (or railcar loads) of the commingled materials.

Without RCRA regulation limitations, PWB manufacturers could also form recycling consortiums to further minimize not only transportation costs, but also on-site storage space of these materials.

Lee Wilmot
HADCO Corp
lwilmot@hadco.com
603/896-2424