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After a serious degreasing session, I have a plastic milk bottle containing about half a litre of combined white spirit (turps) 75%, methylated spirit (meths) 20%, bike degreaser, and chain lube. It might have been a terrible idea to mix these, but what's done is done. It's settled with the crap at the bottom and I was hoping to filter and reuse it.
However there's a whiff of solvent smell around the bottle which spreads in the garage to a faint whiff. No such smell coming from the containers the spirits came in, which still have plenty in them. I've put an old seal inside the cap but it hasn't stopped it.
I'm going to take this devil concoction to the recycling centre now anyway, but I'm interested in what have I created and how is it able to escape from a sealed bottle.
It's now Nov 7th so...too late for local bonfire; talk about going up with a bang...
Is it just traces on the outside of the bottle that you're smelling?
I recently had white spirit in a plastic tub. where the tub was sitting was damp was damp with white spirit that had not been on the outside before so I think it can escape slowly thru plastic
Depends on the specific type of plastic bottle I guess... And how old/perished the plastic is.
I'd hazard the type of plastic bottles milk can come in, are not the same plastic as what isopropanol comes in, for example, and probably not so good for storing solvents.
Milk ones HDPE, solvents in PET. Fizzy drinks also come in PET so I'll grab one of those.
Yes, looks like it can diffuse through it:
"Mineral spirits (aka paint thinner) are no good for ABS plastic, HDPE, and EPDM."
"The plastic bottles you'll have available are are acrylic, HDPE, LDPE, PET, or PP. Don't put solvents in acrylic"
"However, the more nonpolar hydrocarbons (xylene, naphtha, paint thinner) slowly diffuse through the sides of LDPE bottles and escape"
It’s now Nov 7th so…too late for local bonfire; talk about going up with a bang…
I once had about a litre of petrol which I had contaminated from chain degreasing. I had the genius idea that the easiest thing to do was put it in a metal wheel barrow and light it. Two observations:
1. it was surprisingly difficult to light
2. It remained burning far longer than I expected!
At a tangent - back in the good old days when paint was proper paint and living in a very rural area...nearly empty tin; wonder if that will burn; 1 match and yep it really did burn - for a long time - and produced clouds of toxic smoke from just a smidge of paint.
As most paints are now water based it's unlikely I could re-create that but...
it was surprisingly difficult to light
There are numerous YouTube videos showing how to light petrol on fire. You can learn a lot from those.
back in the good old days when paint was proper paint and living in a very rural area…nearly empty tin; wonder if that will burn; 1 match and yep it really did burn – for a long time – and produced clouds of toxic smoke from just a smidge of paint.
My dad was a painter and decorator and back in the 60s/70s he would have a bonfire in the back garden once a month to clean out all his paint pots. I remember it being a very smelly affair an probably quite close to being a local environmental disaster.
There are numerous YouTube videos showing how to light petrol on fire. You can learn a lot from those.
This might have been before youtube... it was certainly a long time before TicToc - I could have gone viral and become rich!