8/13/2023 0 Comments A wasted life bookLeeds has an incinerator where the refuse is burned to generate electricity, with a plan for district heating in future.Ī problem with both of these comes with the current practice of waste segregation by the consumer. There are similar arrangements in a number of European cities. It now provides heat to the University, the Hospital and some industry. A challenging task for what proved to be a major chemical engineering tool to manage flows of matter and heat and chemical reactions in three dimensions. This was not just about pipes and pumps the whole combustion system was designed and modelled with the new Fluent software which he had created jointly with Hans Ferit Boysan. It was only in 1988 that IChemE Fellow Jim Swithenbank, of Sheffield University, persuaded the city to create a system in which refuse incineration provided heat through pipes. Dust and acid scrubbing were used, but there was no thought about CO2.ĭistrict heating had been introduced in the UK after WWII, utilising waste heat from power stations for new estates replacing bombed ones. I was not the only one who thought it was a pity that they just wasted energy as flue gas. They were common but not popular locally. However, municipal incinerators built a hundred years later were optimised for destruction, not energy recovery. The first was in 1874 in Nottingham, UK and naturally they used the heat to raise steam. To reduce the volume and cost of landfill, refuse can be incinerated, leaving only ash. We’ve got plenty of holes in the ground.” This has unfortunately been a common attitude for waste of all sorts, being discarded to land, water and air at low cost to the producer Incineration “I don’t know what all the fuss is about. Landfill in precious holes in the ground has been the standard method of dealing with household rubbish from Victorian times Who would guess that we would be doing that in 2022? Electric dustcarts were stopped at about the same time, but are starting to come back. My father was responsible for maintenance of one of these and he remarked to me what a terrible job it was for the people who picked items off conveyor belts, and how glad he was when they stopped in the 1960s. Efforts were made to recover everything of value from domestic and industrial waste. However, during WWII the Refuse Departments of major cities became Salvage Departments. Landfill in precious holes in the ground was the standard method of dealing with household rubbish from Victorian times. Suitable holes in the ground were becoming more and more valuable and the cost of a volume of waste went up and up. It turned out that filling the hole with industrial and domestic waste was more profitable than mining it and making bricks had been, because the clay prevented toxic materials seeping away. In the early 80s I worked for a company, part of a group which included a manufacturer of bricks, for which it mined clay. We’ve got plenty of holes in the ground.” This has unfortunately been a common attitude for waste of all sorts, being discarded to land, water and air at low cost to the producer. In the early 70s, I attended a conference on waste treatment and recycling in which one delegate declared “I don’t know what all the fuss is about. The instinct of repair and reuse instilled from WWII, and the concept of rationing have not left me Landfill
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