Shout Out to All Scrap Metal Forum Members -and- Mercury Recovery **Important**

Regarding Mercury switches: Mercury switches / viles should be carefully removed before scrapping the equipment or item containing mercury switches and old thermostats etc.

Throughout the years I have run into ocassional mercury viles/ switches, but I hardly had to worry about it until we started liquidating this commercial & Industrial salvage yard. The photo's show some of the industrial electrical control units we have srapped and out of approx. 45 control cabinets & boards, almost all of them had at least two per cabinet... thats a lot of mercury.

Photo Bucket pictures I posted today:

http://s1209.photobucket.com/albums/...ry%20Recovery/

Are you able to sell them? I have a few but no luck finding a yard that will take them

I was getting $1.00 per switch through a state program awhile back. All recovered mercury is returned to industry for reuse. If you ever scrap a Porsche they have mercury filled TUBES hidden in the rocker panels on some models..very dangerous( helps with weight transfer on curves). Nasty stuff since it turns to vapor at room temps.

I have found a few in hospital machinery, I think its to do with needing a arcless switch in a flammable (ether & oxygen) atmosphere.
& industry switchboards. A scary find amongst all of the brass buss-bar.

is the switch the piece the green wires are connected to?

http://img.diytrade.com/cdimg/100411...ury_switch.jpg

I need to apologize regarding the Mercury Post / Shout -out. The intended article did not actually post. I had used micro-Soft word to write about the mercury and then I copied and pasted it onto the forum and I obviously did not high-lite my whole article properly, that was my first mistake, my second was uploading some of the wrong photo's, and third big mistake was myself not proof-reading and checking the post thoroughly once it was on.

What originally prompted me to write about the mercury in the first place was because of a incident that occurred on this site a couple weeks ago. Long story short, we are liquidating / scrapping an entire old salvage yard in Northern Wisc. It is located in a small community where everybody knows everyone in one way or another. While at a local restaurant I was approached numerous times by two of the local scrappers and they mentioned seeing a load of UN-scrapped/ (not broken down) appliances that we sent out . So anyways they were ecstatic when I offered them 35 appliances for them to scrap providing they give me 30% Now these guys knew what they were doing, they seemed like seasoned scrappers, within two, two and a half days they had the 35 scrapped out and they were happier than heck. Since they were quite proficient I had them break-down some of the Industrial control units/ large electrical boxes. A couple days later I walked over by them while they were taking a break and I was shocked to see these mature men (Probably in early twenties) had a couple clear plastic cups with about a inch and a half of mercury and they were pouring it from one cup to another back and forth, essentially playing with it? So anyways a few days ago I began to wonder how many other scrappers out there might not be aware of the hazards of Mercury etc. Well..... that was exactly what prompted me to write something about it in hope that it brings needed awareness.

Truly,
GreenTruckR

Mercury is no joke, one of my regular scrap customers was upgrading to non-mercury thermostats and broke 2 on the tile floor after removing them, it was a hot day and it turned to vapor fast. He called hazmat and they had to de-contaminate the whole house since the dog drug mercury everywhere. No one got sick, but it is a threshold toxin that builds up and 'gets ya later in life. This line of work is dangerous to begin with.

We buy White-Rodgers brand mercury flame sensors found on gas valves, furnaces and water heaters and boilers.
Buying Mercury Flame Sensors, $30 each (= $150 lb!) Limited time only!
White Rodgers brand ONLY. Models 3098-134, 3098-xxx, 3049-xxx, 3094-xxx, (xxx can be any number after dash) 3046-5, 30A46-5.

Full article at Scrap Metal Forum: https://www.scrapmetalforum.com/scra...#ixzz5tKimtac3