Reclaiming Lead Dross

[Guardian]

I got about 800 lbs of dross from a manufacturing facility that produces radioactive equipment. They were pretty liberal in their dross removal, removing a fair amount of lead in the process. I'm in the process of reclaiming it. Its a LOT of work.

I bought a Satan's Little Smelter in the 100 lb variety for this task. That thing will get seriously hot. Most of the paint is gone, not burnt but gone, on the first use. Even it was struggling with this stuff. There's so much dirt mixed in that it takes forever to get it up to temperature to melt the lead. The dirt is just an insulator and wastes lots of propane.

The second round, I "salted" the pot with the lead I got out of the first run. That worked a lot better, but it's going to be slow going at this rate. I'm not even fluxing at this point, just trying to remove the majority of the dirt by draining the lead off the bottom.

I did get several ingots of lead from Doe Run. Guess I ought to hang one on the wall just for the story.

[Tazza]

I got some range scrap from a mate, it was on sawdust or something and stored outside. It was a soggy mass of lead, dirt and wood shavings. I had the same issue, getting it hot enough to burn the **** off. It was a lot more work than it was worth, but i got it done in the end.

I hope you get enough lead from it to make the gas worth while. I'd suggest you work with smaller amounts at a time to get it going. When you get a nice pool of lead at the bottom, you give it a good mix to get the heat into the dross.

[Big Dog]

I would try adding some used motor oil to the mix (and maybe a bit of paraffin wax) and using a weed burner torch to get it burning to increase the heat evenly throughout

once you have molten lead in the bottom very, very carefully add small amounts of the reclaimed dross and keep adding sawdust & used motor oil, it will be a smoking fiery mess but it should work faster and better

[Tazza]

I use wax too, i even have a spray bottle with diesel to get the wax burning. I find that when i get it burning that it melts a lot better when i keep stiring it, flames and all.

[runfiverun]

you need that oxygen barrier to reduce the oxides back into lead alloy.

[Guardian]

ARG! Naturally, I just hauled off the used motor oil yesterday. Fortunately, it's time to change the oil in the F350 again, so I'll have another 3.5 gallons soon.

I did start adding dross to the melted lead last time, leaving a layer of the hot dirt over the lead in hopes that it would dissipate some energy if a little moisture made it in. That may be ignorance on my part, but I'd like to avoid meeting the tinsel fairy.

I'll try to get some photos this week to illustrate the lead/spoils ratio.

[Big Dangle]

That's awesome, but idk 800 pounds would be pretty intemadating but looks like your off to a good start.

[Guardian]

That's awesome, but idk 800 pounds would be pretty intemadating but looks like your off to a good start.

:bigsmyl2: It wasn't intimidating at all, when I didn't know what I was getting into.:bigsmyl2:

Now, I'm stuck with it and just have to get it done. I've already called the feller and told him it's going to take a little longer than I anticipated to get his dross container back to him. We'll see what the final split is and determine if it's worth the pain then.

[Guesser]

I got about the same weight of dross from an old printing plant. Got to working it up with a turkey fryer, found it to come out as beautiful linotype alloy, freshly cast it tests 22 BHN on my Cabin Tree test set, takes a lot of propane but for 80$ I get about 80 ingots out of each 5 gallon bucket of dross. Paid 80$ for 8 buckets of dross, haven't kept track of the gas I've used; doesn't matter.