Forgive me, I know very little of chemistry.
The sewage pipe burst in the basement of the building I live in and my unit has been filled with, going by the symptoms, “healthy” 10-50 ppm levels of H2S and more stuff and the services have certainly been taking their time fixing it. In an act of desperation, I bought some bentonite clay in local pet store, put several kilograms of it into bin and started watering it since I read it could act as H2S adsorbent. I did that for a while. I also sprinkled sodium bicarbonate over it in case SO2+H20 was a reaction that occurred. First day I did it it worked great, but I’m not sure if the following times were anything but placebo. Yes, my mind didn’t work very well when I did all of that.
I understand now that the only sane way to deal with this situation is to escape location. However, it occurs to me that if H2S simply adheres to the bentonite clay, somehow disturbing it will release it and I’m now left with several kilograms of hazardous material.
So, how do I dispose of it? Can I simply throw it away into urban trash collection system? Can I divide it into fist-sized chunks and throw it away over time? Can I safely cure H2S out of it?
Normally, I’d love to call my local hazardous materials disposal authority and have professionals handle it but I’m in Russia and doing such a fun call these times is likely to launch a chain of events where I end up somewhere in the trenches. Not an outcome I wish to bring about.
alzymologist@sopuli.xyz 1 week ago
In Russia? Just dump it dude. Hazmat department would screw you up unless you are in one of the capitals or in science-city, and now probably even there.
Bentonite with sulfides is more or less naturally occurring stuff. Sulfur is probably well chemically bonded with whatever metal ions were there by now, it will stink but not nearly as much as original stuff; clay also has lots of surface for adsorption. You did a sane thing. Now dump it - just not in “indoors” trash container, drive it off.
jennytopinka@mander.xyz 1 week ago
Sorry for the late reply. Don’t worry, I understand very well how contacting my government is going to go.
I live in Moscow, and have neither a car nor a license and nobody to help me with this, so the logistics of just dumping it off is complicated. I can’t just dump a small bucket of a suspicious-looking smelly substance on the ground in the nearby forest where it’ll be found, it’ll get trivially traced back by DNA, and every corner here has a camera. It gets worse if I try to bring a shovel.
I’ve once crossed Bitsevsky Forest, which is a dense forest without infrastructure on foot across the thick part in the middle of winter and that experience have taught me there’s always a good chance at least one other person is nearby.
I have reasons not to trust my nose anymore, so if it’s attention-attracting kind of smelly, I can’t ride public trains into the sticks and do it there.
My options as I see it are to dump it into an urban creek (get spotted doing something suspicious) or to bury it on a dacha, a gardening allotment loosely connected to me or just dump it into an ancient pit latrine located on it. Is that going to poison groundwater and local wells?
What’s wrong with dumping it bit by bit into trash, coating it in a cat litter bentonite and making it look like a regular kitty litter?
alzymologist@sopuli.xyz 1 week ago
If it is stinky, it would get stinkier in an indoors bin once food waste gets in and starts fermenting and heating up; those rooms are not well ventilated usually.
That is, I’m assuming you have many bucketfuls of the stuff.
Dacha is perfect solution imo. Latrines have same stuff in them naturally, you won’t make a difference. H2S is natural product of biowaste decay in anaerobic condition, and it is itself biodegradable. If you own the soil, you could also use it as soil modifier if you know what you are doing. Or pile it up, rains and bacteria will deal with soon.
Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 1 week ago
Yep, let mother nature do her thing, which she does well