Naked Science Forum
General Science => General Science => Topic started by: DanQuestions on 19/08/2019 12:31:40
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To deal with plastic waste are these 2 ideas possible?
1: People are against burning waste to produce electricity because of the pollution it causes, but if the temperature was hot enough could it not break down the molecules until they become atoms again, therefore not releasing any harmful gasses?
2: Would it be possible to compress waste in to small cubes so it could be easily stored?
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High temperature incineration is used to destroy some materials, but (ironically) you usually have to add additional fuel to get things hot enough.
Even them you still have to deal with things like chlorine and sulphur in the feedstock which can cause corrosion problems.
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I've always found it annoying to throw away polymerised alkanes whilst having to pay through the nose for AVGAS, diesel and oil with pretty much the same energy density. Surely there must be a bored chemist out there who can turn scrap plastic back into useful liquid hydrocarbons!
Alternatively, several coalfired power stations burn coal slurry - essentially, water pumped out of coal mine sumps with a high content of combustible particulates, or "fluidised" coal dust. It should be possible to freeze and grind plastic waste into a similar material with a large surface area that can be burned usefully, or at worst, used to "enrich" a gas flame. The corrosive bits are only a problem if you don't anticipate them (use a ceramic combustion chamber and chimney) or account for corrosion in your lifetime cost planning of the facility.