Tuesday, June 12, 2007

efficient incineration

I quote this email from a friend of mine who became heavily involved in the building of a modified incineration system for the Royal Jubilee hospital in Victoria , Canada. The very important modification that they made to solve emissions problems was to operate a two lung burning system.


It was this innovation that made me aware of the amount of temperature control that can be exercised over the fuel and how important it was to do so. We also now have the control systems available to automate the process.

A large fire chamber is built and lined with fire brick. This could easily be a old shipping container for do it your selfers. A gas exit stack is added that feeds into a small burn chamber also with a chimney.

By controlling the air intake to the main chamber, the temperature can be held at 600 degrees. Or 350 degrees if the intent is to produce charcoal. Depending on the load, this is operated for twelve to eighteen hours, completing the process.

The flu gases at 600 degrees enters the secondary chamber were sufficient air is provided to allow a fast temperature jump to 2000 degrees. The remaining volatiles are burned and because of the speed of the process, the production of other combustion products is hugely minimized. That means few nitrogen compounds and other temperature transitioning compounds found in one lung operations.

This solved the hospital's very serious emission problem.

The idea of setting this up for a farm is very attractive since it promises a very consistent charred carbon or charcoal end product. In the case of destroying municipal waste at 600 degrees, one is left with a little grey ash and all the organics unaffected since we are below either the melting temperature or burn temperature for manufacturing metals and glass.

Ford's quote:


Great concept

Consider this as a cycle

Waste is incinerated using current technology that produces cleaner air as an output than the air coming into the system when the system is anywhere near cities.

Heat is captured and used as a low pressure (i.e. non boiler) how water system to heat green houses.

Exhaust air, which is clean, but laden with H2O and CO2 is fed through the greenhouses, obviously at times when the greenhouses are empty of people.

Plant life in the greenhouse is accelerated due to the foregoing.

Waste is reduced by better than 90% with the 10% residual comprised of an inert ash that is a perfect road fill, cement fill, anything of that nature, glass and metal. Using the correct system which operates at under 600 deg F, results in no deterioration to glass or metal, including aluminum foil.

I don't understand blogs, never had a chance to learn them. The above works. It is not a matter of theory, just getting people past the concept of incineration. I can back up everything stated above. Feel free to use and let's chat one day.

Ford Cannon



What Ford has pointed out, is that this is an ideal fit for large green house operations. They need two inputs in order to maximize productivity. One is heat in the off season in the form of warm water as cheap as possible and off grid. The second is plenty of clean carbon dioxide.

What we have described is a batch process that can be operated on demand with the outputs utilized as necessary. It could not be more flexible from the viewpoint of a greenhouse operation. They could even pick up dumping fees from the municipality for taking truckloads of garbage. That would mean designing the primary chamber to a size capable of handling such a load.