Hello and dumb question or to me it is, but are there still big commercial scale incinerators in use around the world? When my brothers and sister and I were young there was a huge one in our town, now it is the site of the new sewage plant. I imagine in the days of environmental conserving and reducing bad smog, pollution and such, there are not many; maybe I am wrong. Thanks for the info in advance.
Are incinerators still used?
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JHZR2
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I thought they burned hot enough that they were fairly clean, and their exhaust scrubbed...
There is a waste to energy facility in Grand Rapids, MI. And another really large one in Detroit.
Anopther very large one in Lancaster Copunty, PA. Stack emissions are real time monitored by the EPA. Burns very clean and is a mass burn incinerator. Produces a signigficant amount of electricity and greatly reduces the solid waste volume that has to go into the landfill.
They are still around. Rebranded a little bit for the green movement. "Waste to energy" is the term now rather than "incinerator" for municipal operations. Most hazardous waste is incinerated across the country.
They aren't that bad environmentally these days. If it is a waste to energy plant, you get electricity from it, scrubbers catch much of the nasty stuff in the air and incinerator designs reduce the amount of ash left over, which is the "worst" of what the incinerator produces.
They have been illegal here for many years. I couldn't even burn trash in my backyard..
Thanks eljefino and Blue and VicVinegar, for the replies. Yeah, I thought that they burned anything and gases werent bad from them. Lot cleaner than the coal fired power plants. Read they are shutting 5 down in PA, OH, MD and some other places.
yeah they've been trying to shut the one in Newark NJ for years.
OT but is your name Adam V.
Brings back memories of the elementary school I went to in Ohio; it had a big incinerator adjacent to the playground, where they burned each day's trash. Imagine the smell of hundreds of those waxy cardboard milk containers burning! Once in a while some jokester would throw an old shoe in the trash and there'd be the smell of burning rubber too.
To this day, every time I smell someone burning garbage, it reminds me of that school.
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If anything they need MORE clean burn incinerators around the world....the idea to bury garbage in the earth had to come from a brain equal in capacity to a single celled organism.
Originally Posted By: pair of Blazers
yeah they've been trying to shut the one in Newark NJ for years.
Hempstead Town on Long Island has had a waste--->energy plant for over 20 years. Works very well with no smoke or odor. Burns around 1 millon tons of trash per year and generates around 500,000 megawatts per year. There are quite a few in the northeast.
http://www.seas.columbia.edu/earth/wtert...%20Recovery.pdf
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