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   comp.os.linux.misc      Linux-specific topics not covered by oth      135,536 messages   

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   Message 133,722 of 135,536   
   Paul to Carlos E.R.   
   Re: Underground fires   
   20 Dec 25 12:14:59   
   
   XPost: alt.comp.os.windows-11   
   From: nospam@needed.invalid   
      
   On Sat, 12/20/2025 7:15 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:   
      
   >   
   > Garbage should be burnt (if burnt at all) in a high temperature oven with   
   filters for toxic fumes.   
      
   An entrepreneur tried this and eventually gave up.   
   The process was not clean enough to be used, without consequences.   
      
   Any of the chemists I graduated with, could have told this person it won't   
   work.   
      
   It might have been something like dioxin. There was never a "final report"   
   or "lessons learned", to put a stop to someone else trying it.   
      
      "When plastic burns, it releases a cocktail of harmful chemicals into the   
   air.   
       These include dioxins, furans, mercury, and polychlorinated biphenyls   
   (PCBs).   
       Dioxins, in particular, are known carcinogens and can cause reproductive   
   and   
       developmental problems, damage the immune system, and interfere with   
   hormones."   
      
   There is a difference between filtering a truly trace chemical, and buckets   
   of bad stuff coming out the bottom of the rig.   
      
   This is what happens when the consumption method is not at a high enough   
   temperature. Raising the temperature of the process, increases the   
   price per ton, of the processing. But humans will "try to burn that shit   
   with gasoline", and even with a pure oxygen supply for help (dangerous),   
   the temperature of the output reactants is too low. Only a few combustive   
   gas mixtures, give relatively high output temperatures, and usually involve   
   relatively tiny molecules. It's possible an acceptable combustion process   
   needs three times that temperature, a plasma of some kind maybe. You can't   
   get there with combustion, it's going to take something a lot more whizzy   
   (and energy consumptive).   
      
   The Sun would make a good garbage bucket. But you'd have to find an article   
   that analyzes the consequences (other than the cost per ton of launching   
   garbage).   
      
   A fusion reactor gets nice and warm. The ignition facility (NIF) in the States   
   used for fusion research, the target zone there gets nice and warm, but   
   this is hardly cheap kit to be burning garbage. In the fusion reactor,   
   you're ruin the containment walls, with discarded tomato sandwich splatter :-)   
      
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility#/med   
   a/File:NIF_target_chamber_2.jpg   
      
   There are continuing comments in the local news, about "solving our garbage   
   problem by burning it". I was born in a city that did this, burned garbage   
   in a relatively low temperature incinerator. I've been to that incinerator   
   in a pickup truck. The tailgate fell off our truck, into the pit which buffers   
   the garbage fed into the incinerator. It's 200 feet down. There is a ladder on   
   the side of the pit, covered in slime, for you to climb down :-) Well, the   
   crane operator at the pit was a champ. He picked up our tailgate with the   
   bucket scoop jaws, pulled it up the two hundred feet, and deposited it   
   on the ground next to the offload area. It was "only a little bit bent".   
      
   That incinerator used to shower us in soot and fallen debris. Any washing   
   outside, would get covered in debris and need to be washed again. It all   
   depended on the wind direction, as to who got the "output".   
      
   They don't do that any more. But I bet the politicians reminisce about   
   how "successful" that operation was. Today, there is a lawn over top of   
   everything that went on there, and methane vent pipes on the premises.   
   That garbage today, is like most cities, driven out of town on 40 foot trailers   
   and such.   
      
   Today, a new town dump costs about $500,000,000 to build, and has a   
   liner in the bottom to collect toxic fluids. That figure, is what   
   stokes all this interest in combustion :-)   
      
      Paul   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)   

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