Here in Central PA we seperate-out and recycle what we can, Burn the Rest, and use the smokestack-scrubber ash for Wallboard. The old landfill materials are being excavated and burned, the resulting (unusable) ash is then returned to the landfill, but it takes MUCH less volume. This increase in availible Landfill capacity is counted on the "Plus" side of the ledger, and has been running a paper-profit for years, not to mention extending the Landfill's projected lifespan.
I have operated a solid waste incinerator and three liquid hazardous waste incinerators. All had scrubbers and one had a electrostatic precipitator also. They all had stack test done following a very strict protocol. These were at max flow with waste that we blended to represent a worst case scenario. EPA representatives were on site to observe. The incinerators did an excellent job. l lived about five miles from the plant. I wouldn't raise my children that close if I thought we had toxic emissions. Also, I wouldn't work for a company that would allow that.
amandaggogo Sadly Sweden is trying to be more like us. Scandinavia is not exempt from the denationalisation agenda around the world right now, despite being the top ranking region in basically everything.
I want to hear more about the ash produced, the chemicals released into the air, the filters used, the effects on the people who live around these plants and the people who work in them, and how the air quality around the plants is monitored, both by the people who manage the plant and independently. Where is the oldest incinerator? How has the health been over time of the people who have lived around it? Are there people who actively monitor the health side?
Equally important as electricity production from garbage incineration is the production of heat used for district heating. Around 10% of Swedens need for warm water and residential heating is covered by burning garbage and another 3-4% is covered by utilising waste heat from industry.
Scyrixus patriotic about a country who defends rapists if they're foreign, has banned criticism on emigration and constantly demonizes men and young boys
***** I don't belive you to be the holder of the most nuanced or particularly well informed oppinions on this matter as what you claim is very far from reality. I'm in no way a patriot but what you are assertings is just plain false, sure there is a tabo in sweden on being too critical on matters concerning imigration but it's not banned in any way, there is one party that has gotten media attention that has been "demonizing" men and young boys and they didn't even get into the "riksdag"(our parliment ish) furthermore the claim that we "defend" rapists if they are foregin has no basis in reality whatsoever. In fact in Sweden what is, in law, defined as rape is much broader than in most other countries, the reason for many rape cases going unresolved is a lack of evidence. I'm from sweden btw if you did not guess that allready.
Why? Because in America, the country is dominated by large companies primarily oil/energy. Europe has their head on straight. They think of What's best for all, not the best interest of big companies. otherwise, we'd burn our trash too.
Kassandra Lynne Rose Sullinger Actually... Europe has a council which regulates most of the companies and stuff like that... Sadly only sweden has really caught on the burn trash thing seriously.
G4nst4Ch33se I didn't know that :P. Granted, there are perverts and fools everywhere. I don't watch the news; videos like this are the only way I learn about the world around me.
I have known Sweden did this for a while now, so I was really excited to see you guys make a video on it. I think this is a great idea and we should implement it in the US sooner rather than later. One thing Sweden also does though is separate out recyclables from the trash before burning it; this is a necessary step in the process to make it as clean as possible.
burning always ends with people talking about gasses, but more important than gasses is micro plastics ending up in our food and, recently discovered, can be small enough to penetrate the blood brain barrier, so i'll take toxic fumes over plastic in my brain any day
It isn't just gases. Microscopic particulate matter (PM2.5) is also produced as a byproduct of combustion. And PM2.5 is already a well documented and linearly correlated increasing risk factor for cardiovascular injuries. It has been found that combustion does not completely destroy plastic wastes and microplastics have been found in the fly ash and bottom ash of incinerated materials as well. So you would be inhaling the very thing you don't want getting into your brain as well as the other toxic gasses. And it would go directly into your bloodstream as if you had injected it with a hypodermic needle, moving to the organs and the brain.
That's what Sweden waste to energy plants are doing ( and many oil companies ,cause they will be finned if not).They are using filters to trap the most harmful substances which are then stored I guess .
When I was a kid we had a 55 gallon steel drum in our back yard. We burned our household trash once per week. Reduced everything down to a few shovel full of ashes which we spread out to fertilize the lawn grass.
Thomas Sowell Incinerators have filters that remove toxic pollution and are not as crude as a DIY setup. In Denmark, there is one called Amager Bakke. "Because of filtration and other technologies, sulphur emission is expected to be reduced by 99.5% and NOx by about 95% as well as dioxins and HCl[8][9] and it is claimed to be the cleanest incineration plant in the world.[3]" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amager_Bakke
Much as it saddens me to say... I think we're just screwed. It seems like it's just way too late to fix this pretty planet. We had a bazillion chances and we ignored them all in favor of money and laziness.
if you contain the fumes , first the heat and air flow can be turned into energy, then force the rest threw a water entrapment filtration system that would act like a air filter, and you would reuse the water and only add fresh water when necessary
But what about the Air Pollution Control Residue? That's an extremely toxic sludge that is left when you scrub the toxic fumes out of the flue gases. It must be disposed of in designated hazardous waste landfills.
Japan and Singapore too where everything combustible is incinerated. They have no space for garbage and what's incinerated becomes land reclamation. In addition to the strict recycling programs where you have to separate and drop off. You can have clean incinerators within the busy city.
I'm a union Boilermaker and build power plants for a living. I can tell you bio fuel boilers create a diverse energy structure along with coal, nuclear, natural gas, and renewables. Not only that it creates hundreds of jobs for a whole economy of trades people that most of society is unaware of. Most people don't actually know how we get our energy. Big thumbs up on biofuel boilers.
Firstly, As a Post-Graduate student in Environmental Engineering, I Wholeheartedly appreciate your work and presentation on Waste Incineration. But I've a small question for u, As you have shown that Vehicular emissions and Gases from Landfill take the first and third places in man-made methane emissions from USA....What takes the second place??? As i'm from India, can you provide any info about top five methane emitters in India......Vehicles take first place (I know that), but can you provide list of next largest methane emitters in India.....Some people say Methane generated from farming takes up a place among/in top 5 list in India (But, I don't believe that becoz it makes up only 18-20% of total global methane emissions annually)......U have mentioned 'swedish Incineration plants are using scrubbers from removing toxic chemicals', Can u elaborate on that becoz there are many technologies in use to remove Particulate Matter in air {mainly Gravity settlers, Centrifugal Seperators, Wet collecters(Spray towers, Cyclonic, Impingement, Venturi scrubbers), Electrostatic Precipitators, Frabic filters (Bag house filters) etc...} & to remove gaseous pollutants {Adsorption, Absorption, Condensation, Combustion (Direct Flame combustion, Thermal Combustion, Catalytic Combustion) etc...}.....Don't Ignore & Please Give reply
I prefer recuperate/re-use to recycle, particularly for electronic. The trransistor are so good that most TV, amplifier, microwave oven are still working when I collect them from garbage. Actually, LCD and plasma TV often get damaged by the angry bird that trowed itself on the screen when the other bird is suspected to be a bad bird. Even so, the back light is usually working fine. So LCD TV can be transformed into efficient light for the garage. Or it can be used as a light table for artistic work. For plasma TV, there is excellent power supply which can be used as lab power source. These plasma TV usually provide more than 1 Amp at 200 vol. A 24 volt power source of 5 amp is also perfectly working in these plasma tv.
I think that they should build a company that takes in certain parts of trash and try to restore or sort things as much as possible for whatever good purpose it can have. like glass, paper furniture foods, plastic metals etc.
You can also use plasma gasification to reduce the waste gases from burning trash to negligible levels. Plasma gasification is a process which converts organic matter into synthetic gas,[1] electricity,[2] and slag[1] using plasma. A plasma torch powered by an electric arc, is used to ionize gas and catalyze organic matter into synthetic gas and solid waste (slag).[1][3][4] It is used commercially as a form of waste treatment and has been tested for the gasification of biomass and solid hydrocarbons, such as coal, oil sands, and oil shale.[3] Pure highly calorific synthetic gas consists predominantly of Carbon monoxide (CO), H2, CH, among other components. The conversion rate of plasma gasification exceeds 99%.[8] Non-flammable inorganic components in the waste stream are not broken down. This includes various metals. A phase change from solid to liquid adds to the volume of slag. Plasma processing of waste is ecologically clean. The lack of oxygen prevents the formation of many toxic materials. The high temperatures in a reactor also prevent the main components of the gas from forming toxic compounds such as furans, dioxins, nitrogen oxides, or sulfur dioxide. Water filtration removes ash and gaseous pollutants. The production of ecologically clean synthetic gas is the standard goal. The gas product contains no phenols or complex hydrocarbons however circulating water from filtering systems is toxic. The water removes toxins (poisons) and the hazardous substances which must be cleaned.[9] Metals resulting from plasma pyrolysis can be recovered from the slag and eventually sold as a commodity. Inert slag is granulated. This slag grain is used in construction. A portion of the syngas produced feeds on-site turbines, which power the plasma torches and thus support the feed system. This is self-sustaining electric power.[
There needs to be a way to separate the carbon from the oxygen molecules while it is burning. Like a catalyst for burning trash. If there was an invention like that it would be a revolution in clean burning.
Akeem Perez How about all the Chlorine and Cadmium? Lets not forget about Arsenic, Lithium, Lead, Chromium, Nickel, Antimony and Mercury!!! How your comment got approved I will never know??? (actually I do but will be gracious) All those metals poison any type of catalytic conversion. Toxic stew anyone?
Certain areas where I grew up and where I live now you are allowed to burn your trash. Otherwise you have to choose between pricy trash companies to pay to take it off your hands. I've only known one person who actually did burn their trash regularly, but I saw it as a very toxic practice.
I might sound like an idiot but I haven’t seen someone ask this question already anywhere. What if we dissolved Plastic with acid? I’m generally curious. I don’t know much about acid except that certain types can definitely dissolve plastic. I also don’t think this would cause c02 but I could be wrong.
It’s not necessarily going to go away though. Only a really strong acid like Fluroantimonic acid can dissolve plastic. And now you have a mixture of plastic and much more toxic fluorine..
1. You will need a strong acid 2.You would need a shit-ton of a strong acid and analytical grade acids are expensive af 3. Where will you store your trash-acid mixture ?
We actually do burn our trash. Covanta has 2 plants within 20 miles of each other in New Jersey. One of the plants is located at a power companies main generation station to directly sell the energy back. Check out their site.
im from Sweden and i have worked at Renova, Renova is a trash burning facility that produce electricity and warm water for Gothenburg city, they were the cleanest trash burning facility in Sweden when i worked there and they had big plans to make it even cleaner and was almost ready with the build of a SOx reducing step. to learn the burning stage, electricity and warm water system of the facility that was easy but it has allot of maintenance, but when i came to cleaning the hot gas there were tones of things to learn, only the water cleaning system was way harder than burning,electricity and warm water system combined, and the scrubber system was 50 times bigger and much more complex then the water cleaning system but the maintenance was low. even if it was very much to learn it was a interesting work place :)
When I was a kid living in a very rural area, we didn't have garbage pickup. We had to burn our trash. That meant that we had to separate our non-burnables and haul them off to be recycled. Now I live in an urban area where the garbage truck runs every week and I don't recycle nearly as much. Nearly all of my trash goes in the same can and gets toted off to the same landfill. Make of that what you will.
When people are say "We are reaching the carrying limit of earth!" I under stand perfectly. But, I think by the time we are suppose in danger we will have found more efficient ways to day things that seem crazy today, but will soon become the norm... hopefully.
We should certainly build furnaces to burn the trash and then recycle the fumes coming out of the burning, i.e. turn CO2 back into oil, methane into energy, etc.
Build an incinerator which has the facility to pipe CO2 deep underground, (not at the surface as with landfills, the reason why methane escapes into the atmosphere.) The piping of CO2 deep underground is called Carbon Capture.
Land disposal is more economical. At some deposits of refuse the amount of dunnage heigth is cost effective. Incineration use's a lot of diesel to stoke the refuse. What can be said shipping waste far distance to a landfill does as well.
the rest of the world??????? ARE YOU FUCKING HIGH go watch the garbage city in egypt video also see the MASSIVE mountains of trash in india . you are a fucking moron america is better than you deserve.oh yeah also go see the shithole countries known as haiti and pakistan
So the CO2 released by burning plastic is just returning to the "natural" earth cycle of gases ... Didn't know a big part of plastic used and thrown away isn't produced with mineral oils anymore.
A power plant next to me pretty much vacuums the methane from the land field and burns it in a turbine. Producing the energy demand for peak power. Granted they buy the non peak power from a coal burning plant because the methane produced isn't enough for 24 hour operations.
DNews 3:17 I have personally been visiting the oil power plant in Karlshamn (Sweden), they have such advanced smoke cleaning that they can use raw oil as fuel, raw oil contains much sulfur, but they make plaster out of the sulfur, that later for example might be used to make walls in houses, that's some really awesome recycling, don't you think? More info can be found here, I suggest you copy paste the Swedish version into Google Translate to extract as much information as possible (maybe add to the English version too?) sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karlshamnsverket encrypted.google.com/#q=translate
All we need to do with trash is to establish a cycle. That means when we throw away something we can either recycle it or burn for energy, but we first need to separate trash. That is the most important thing to do, so buy yourself more bags and separate trash. Just look on the landfill here 0:23, how much plastic is there. I am separating just plastic, glass and paper and the rest trash usually just organic waste. I would welcome if I could separate metals, but that not yet established in the area where I live. Also pls do not throw away any electric appliances, batteries and so on with the rest of the trash and take care of them properly.
I'm not a chemistry genius and only have basic knowledge of it, but wouldn't it be possible to cut down on the emissions by somehow changing most of it into chemical powders or liquids that could be used for chemical and biological labs?
I like the idea. Yes, we should reduce the waste we reproduce, but no matter what, we're still going to produce that waste. So, we need to find ways to further cut down on the extent of what goes into land fills. On top of that, we can get some energy out of it.
The biggest problem is that all the companies do NOT take back their product once used. Like a Coke Plastic bottle or a Car Engine Oil Can 5 Ltr. We use this and throw, Rather than all companies should take back the used products - Clean It, Refill It, Seal It and Sell it. So the whole process of Trash Pileup will end. I still don't understand whats so strange about this that companies do apply this simple method.
For it. But with the draw backs, we could just not use some of the stuff that would release sulfur. We could bury it. Compost it. Recycle it. Reuse it. Reduce it. And then what's left, we may put it on a land fill.
I got a crazy idea. How about we incorporate nuclear power plants into this equation. We can use the heat produced from power plants to also generate some heat necessary for this process? It would be like a hybrid power plant. In the end, yes we still produce radioactive material and hazardous byproducts from the trash, but that saved space from the loss of mass can then be placed in the landfill that would have been used for the untreated trash.
Believe burning trash was considered to be too expensive in the past. But we cannot keep creating landfills that are toxic in and of themselves, liners crack and eventually we will have problems with contaminants in land and water. So integrating the use of burning trash is another method we should explore and implement with recycling 100% of trash as our ultimate goal.
I like Japan method. Everything that isn't recyclable has to be burnable. So things like Styrofoam aren't really used much. If I recall correctly, they do this for two reasons, one, they don't have room for landfills. Two, they love their nature. And I can't blame them, they have a beautiful country. Infact, just about every country has it's own kind of beauty to their nature. If only people from other countries realized the same of their own countries.
at 4:50, don't say "added bonus." A bonus, is by definition, something that is added. Therefore, "added bonus" is redundant. Much more concise and correct to just drop the "added". Say "As a bonus, they cut down on greenhouse gasses."
Recycling of noncombustible components like glass and metal and burning the rest is an obvious solution that can be used if materials and landfill space become more expensive someday. The decision to do this should be dictated by market forces and should require no special bins, and no mandates if done properly and for the right reasons.
I think we should just compact our trash and build houses with it, after it’s clean or whatever. Like in between concrete walls and it might act like insulation? I don’t know if this is even possible, but what else can we do
the reason why i'm not 100% opposed to it if there's a filter is because its not as heavy on the fossil fuel reserves we have, cuts methane emissions, and prevents the heavy metals that normally leach into ground water from landfills from going in. But its NOT a cure all. The best possibility would be to use what electricity we can from fossil fuels to manufacture wind turbines and scale up a sweet gadget I heard about that can sequester carbon dioxide in a chamber using water and can be made into a lifesize tree shape. These "artificial trees" ought to be investigated as a way to end climate change but can't.
To reduce the co2 in the air why don't we pump all the co2 into green houses because plants breath co2. I imagine there is a way to filter out all the sulfur and etc. If we can take out all the sulfur out of co2 we could do the same with the burning of methane.
Incinerators FTW! Dutch and Swedish incinerators save lots of trash transport,only put out CO2 and some ash that gets recycled by the concrete industrie,saving them some energy in concrete production.
Haha I was just going to bring up the methane issue at 2:25. Methane can be used in bio-gas facilities though and sometimes the landfill will own and operate these facilities or let utilities own and operate these systems while they get a rent payment for this. The issue sometimes lies with the corrosion of the equipment because the gas is much dirtier (higher S and N content) than that of natural gas burned in an ICE. I know there are some systems (usually tied to multiple landfills) which run steam turbines, but for smaller landfills there is not enough energy produced to run steam turbines. Does Sweden use ICE as well as these steam turbines? Also what types of new technology are they coming out with (if any) to capture methane other than capping off landfills and using pipes to collect the methane from anaerobic decomposition?
I think garbage should be separated in all different types of waste as Japan does like bottles and cans with label and cap removed and go in separate plastic bin of plastics, papers and cardboards are separated also organic waste and other dirty products are burned for energy
I saw an episode of I love Lucy, and Fred was in the basement burning trash ...I think its better to burn instant removal, plus no leaching of chemicals in the water and land..
These plants do not generate alot of electricity at all. It's more of a byproduct to make the plant self sufficient and a few % of a citys energy consumption. You will however generate massive amounts of heat which is channeled through a central heating grid to nearby cities. If you want these plants to work for your country you need: 1, cold climate, 2, excisting central heating grid 3, lots of crap to burn. He also forgot to mention that we get payed to import garbage from countries that can't process it (England). So you get payed for the product you burn to generate heat that you also sell. They haven't invented recycling in England yet so their garbage has a higher energy content than ours. The only thing you can't process: beds, true story. The springs in the matresses mess up the roaster. There is also a toxic by product in the form of black blocks ingrediences: the entire periodic table. Norweigan oil industry buy these for their refineries. -source: I'm a process plant engineer student.
Love it when people represents Sweden like this, because I am swedish. Besides, this recykeling thing is one of the things swedish people are the most proud of, just take me playing simcity (2013), I allways have the burning facilities at the garbagedump, Allways!
"Released CO2 from burning trash comes from the stuff that was part of the earth's carbon cycle." But not atmospheric carbon cycle. Check your trash bin. It is basically all plastic and it comes from oil.
A lot of it is plastic, yes. There will be some types of paper (such as napkins, tissues and paper towels), but yes. There will be a lot of plastic of different types. Any CO² produced on top of the dioxins and furans and other toxic fumes will be carbon that has been locked out of the carbon cycle for millions of years.
In Mexico each of the neighborhoods they all have an area to put burnable trash, another for recycle and another for waste. Every week they burn the safe pile. I love that smell everytime I'm at a bonfire I think of Mexico and I'm actually able to breathe better over there
if waste that cannot be recycled is the only stuff burnt in incinerators then fine as it means less landfill & less risk to groundwater. It also produces waste heat & that heat should be sent to homes to further cut fossil fuels & then would be so much better for the planet.
I've always had this idea (I hope someone does it, I don't care about money or credit, I just want to see this planet saved), it's probably flawed in ways I'm not smart enough to realize, but it'd be great if we made some time of dome with flame-retardant material (preferably recycled materials) and put some kind of purification vents on it (like they use for gas masks), and then burn trash inside in. Like I said, I'm sure this idea is flawed, it's just something that has been floating around in my head since I was much younger.
