Incinerator Project

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Sigh, there's a lot of room on the learning curve.

I don't have a physics background yet, I'm working my way there. I'm not going to cut corners on something like this, I just thought the slurry part would make the process easier to measure and automate. The I was using the wrong word for this, I'm not keen on using excess 02 to fuel the reaction unless I have to. If I used solid-only trash, would I at least avoid making strong acids? I'm definitely going to think about the project again at some point.

The rural area in question has a burn-pit about a 1/2 mile away, either nobody's paying attention, or they don't ask questions. Either way, I want to be able to get rid of my waste without polluting my backyard (or being left with hazardous waste).

RTFM, I read an instructable where the author claimed to have made a 1000˚F kiln using a variable controller and a resistive heating element. I can link it if you want. I realize how I got the other parts wrong, but I was hoping the high temperature was something I could pull off, it at least seems like something plausible.

Well, don't give up. Get a journal and start taking notes. If you get somewhere significant with this you will have a winner. I'd start by breaking your garbage up the same way recycling is required to be broken up. Take things like batteries and electronics out of the equation completely and work from there. My inclination is that this will mostly be a chemistry project. You might also begin reading existing patents and start looking for items that can be tweaked a bit here and there.

Simply breaking out compost and a burn pile of paper would be well worth it. Venting c02 through the greenhouse alone is a novel idea, you'd probably want to use a filter to keep soot out of the greenhouse and have a C02 reading before going in, but it's a darn fine idea.

Even a non physicist can see that this process is like trying to drive a car in both first gear, and in reverse, at the same time.

A) you're fighting against yourself. First you mix garbage with water, and THEN you set it on fire (when it obviously takes less energy to burn dry stuff). But then after putting in the extra energy to get the wet slurry to catch on fire-you then spend the rest of the process expending energy to get rid of the heat from the fire (that was so hard to create in the first place) by forcing the exhaust through heat exchanges. Extremely wasteful of energy.

And also, I dunno...

B)Piping fumes into an enclosed space like a green house sounds problematic, if not dangerous.

C) I am not aware that plants can "metabolize" toxic fumes other than CO2. But I'm not a botanist.

I would loose the greenhouse. Just go ahead and put smoke into the air via a tall smoke stack. But work on more complete combustion.

Instead of working against yourself energy wise why not go with the grain? Create heat, and then harvest some of the heat to create more heat.

As SpiderVenom said- sort the garbage first. Keep the burnable paper, and food garbage.

Put dry combustible trash/garbage into an incinerator. Set it on fire. Then have the fire boil water for a steam engine . Have the steam engine work a belows pointed back into the incinerator that pumps extra air into the incinerator so that the incinerator gets stoked up to super hot. The super hot incinerator will give the refuse a more complete and thorough burning than it would with out the belows.

Even though there will still be air pollution going up out of the smoke stack of the incinerator it will be less polluting pollution because it will all be just CO2 and no carbon monoxide or other worse stuff because of the thorough combustion.


On the other hand if you do want to go through with this idea of using captive plants to grab the exhaust gas before it goes into the atmosphere maybe...would it be better to use water plants? I'm guessing that pumping CO2 into a vat of water inside of a green house might be less dangerous than pumping it directly into the air of the enclosed space. You could then purposely induce an "algae bloom" of pond scum in the water to harvest the CO2. Just a thought.