Cutting oils are essential to the metalworking process. They are used to ensure that the temperature of machinery is kept both safe and stable, as well as helping to extend the lifetime of your tools.
Although cutting oils can be reused several times if they are of a high enough quality, such as the oils made by Mobil or Fuchs, there will come a time when you will need to replace them for the good of your machinery and the people who use it. When you reach this point, you will want to ensure that your old cutting oils are disposed of in a safe and appropriate manner, and this can be done in two ways:
Recycling cutting oils
If your cutting oils have begun to degrade, you may want to consider recycling them rather than simply disposing of them. There are a number of pieces of equipment, including skimmers, coalescers and magnetic separators, which can be used to clean up your cutting oils so that they can be used again.
Such devices do this by getting rid of impurities and contaminants which build up in the oil when they are used during the metalworking process.
Although these tools can help you to extend the usefulness of your oils, there will come a point when the oils are simply too badly degraded to be used again and it is at this point that you will need to think about its disposal.
Safely disposing of cutting oils
Before you can get rid of used cutting oils, you will need to determine their status. Some oils may be deemed hazardous, which means that they must be disposed of in a safe and controlled manner.
Usually, this means that you will have to take your cutting oil to a specialist treatment facility, where it will be disposed of in such a way that it does not cause any undue harm to people or the environment.
If your oil is non-hazardous, then you will have a much easier time of it. You can usually use an evaporation method to significantly reduce the amount of oil you have, and then dispose of it in a suitable environment.
It is always a good idea to check with your local authority about the proper place to dispose of cutting oils, especially if you are in any doubt as to how you should dispose of them as safely as possible.
