What's the Highest Temperature?

Send it into the Sun, Captain, and there won't be much left. Temperatures there are very high.

Thanks, Crabtree, but I meant burning the material here on Earth. I'm interested in gasification of trash, etc. with nothing left, not even gases.

There are a few locations in the US where they burn trash, and are doing it quite successfully. You can locate them and contact them. A discussion with them can be quite illuminating and answer most or even all of your questions.

Same in England. There are always some products of combustion though, which the our original poster seems not to acknowledge.

Theoretically you should be able to burn anything, but what you do is a transformation. Reduce the bulk volume. Old trash ovens have more ash and send besides smoke also a lot of "dust" into the air. (and often some more during the night also) I try to be polite. Chimney smoke washing reduces the dust and other toxic byproducts. (those sit then in the wash product) But they are not gone. These "ovens" work at lower temperatures - up to 1000 degrees Celsius. This technology has been taken to a higher level, and higher temperature, but as other posters agree, at higher cost. With different names. There is still ash and toxic byproduct. Chemical lab waste like hydrocarbons and (Mercaptane e.g.) are mostly destroyed in incineration ovens at 3000 degrees Celsius and even higher and on a very small scale. A few liters at a time, with glass jar included. But saying nothing is left is incorrect. To incinerate 1/4 liter, a ticket of 20 dollar had to be paid. This thread has opened a lot of windows and also not unimportant: provided information. To reach very high temperatures you need to use plasma techniques, mostly combined with electric arc and gases in the same axis.

On the point of creating a plasma (gas?)... I have seen internet video of a conventional motor being run on (what could be) any variety of fuels which does not have any of the current exhaust contaminants. After starting the motor using the conventional fuel feed the feed is gradually switched over to a line coming through the center of the heated exhaust pipe. The heat of the exhaust pipe 'plasmatizes' the fuel & combustion is 100% - resulting in no exhaust contaminants. The question to me is why don't any major manufactures adopt this system? Carlos

I don't think the motor will act "conventionally" anymore. Feed supply will become very critical if starting from a conventional fluid fuel. Sounds like pre-heating the fuel, works as a technique used in cars on LPG, and engines on heavy oil. In LPG motor the issue is to get the liquid phase into gaseous. With the heavy oil the idea is to adapt the viscosity to the engine's specs. The density of your gaseous fuel will need good dosage to the engine. Exhaust components change with several parameters. It is the equation of fuel and oxygen (air) that 1. changes your engine combustion chamber's temperature. 2. affects your power produced. 3. affects your exhausted components. If experiments of this nature are uncontrolled, the temperature can rise to hazardous highs and melt down your engine combustion parts. And plasma here is IMO not showing.

Even in stars, there are metal atoms, ions or plasma present. Perhaps in neutron stars, where the material atoms are broken down and even protons are converted into neutrons , you could say there are essentially no "atoms" present. Outside of a giant particle accelerator, I don't know of any way to "uncreate" the sub-atomic components of atoms.

Whether it is 6500 degree Kelvin or more. There can be something which is visible and touchable?

For all practical purposes I think Crabtree is correct, and your response seems to suggest that you agree. You say you are "interested in gasification of trash, etc. with nothing left, not even gases." You can't turn the trash into gas without having gas left over. It may not be present in the combustion chamber, but it will be blowing in through somebody's window sometime soon.

There is almost certainly a temperature high enough that the protons and neutrons in the trash would break down into quarks (this happens in particle colliders every day), but at a rate of one or two particles at a time and at great expense. And you would still have quarks and electrons left over, which is not 'nothing'. So neither by using chemical processes like burning, or physical phase change processes like gasification, or nuclear processes like fission, can you end up with nothing. You just turn the trash into something else, and move it to somewhere else.

If you did develop a fission process that would convert ALL of the matter in your trash pile into energy (leaving absolutely no matter behind), you would never know if it had worked or not, it because you and I and the earth would be gasified by the enormous amount of energy released.

I don't mean to discourage you from your project. High temperature disposal of trash is worth pursuing, but your goal of having 'nothing' left is not realistic.

10211°F is the temperature in which Tungsten boils. One of the alloys of steel which you may find in a steel can in your trash. So yes you can burn and evaporate any material and have absolutely nothing. But its not practical. The cost of the furnace and fuel to reach the temperature necessary is very costly. It will much more costly then burning at lower temperatures and place the reduced waste in land fill. Not only that some the gases evaporated will be an environmental hazard. Scrubbers will be necessary to remove them. Some of the gases will now be return to their solid state. Which will then need to be disposed of.

Better to use the trash as fuel to generate steam. The steam can be use to generate electrical power or heat homes.

You could do it cheaply by using a nuclear bomb?

Spencer.

No you couldn't what you have left behind is destruction. Which would be more trash to clean up.

Spencer:

A nuclear bomb costs 100 million on the black market, I think he can do any of the above for less. Oh yes and all of the trash left over from the blast is fuel for more bombs. lol

Amoroso82

The highest tempearture is 6000 deg. Kelvin. This is above 10211°F, the boiling point of Tungsten.

Continuing the thread, 6000 deg. Kelvin is called white point. Everything looks white to Human Eye when temperatures are greater than 6000 deg. Kelvin.

Temperature and Color i.e. Light Emitted, go hand in hand. Topmost is blue, like day sky, treated similar to 6500 deg. Kelvin.

Hi, Aux.

My company markets trash gasification systems (and associated trash sorting and power generation systems).

We've been given tentative approval for a 96 MW trash-fired power-generation plant in the US. We'd provide trash-sorting systems (to separate metals, platics, paper, and recyclables out of the trash), feed the remainder into thermal reactors that will gasify and burn the stuff to 2,300 F (1,250 C), and use the hot gas to drive thermal power-generation systems. There'd be ash left over from the gasification in teh reactors, but there wouldn't be much.

Contact me if you'd like to know more: stratos@spp-consultants.com

Cheers! DZ

In India we use a material called camphor and offer it to God - by burning. It burns without leaving any residue. It has the anamolous effect in that all matter go from solid to vapor state through liquid state, but this goes from solid state to vapor state directly !!! Ask any Hindu Indian for camphor and he will know about it

I cannot think of one thermal/chemical reaction with hocus pocus nothing left.

We in school are taught about this effect. We use it in every temple in India. I am also aware that westerners have never heard about it. But please do go to an Indian store, ask for camphor, buy it, burn it yourself to believe it. It is very cheap too. It is also referred to in our spiritual teachings - comparing soul and body etc etc.

No need to make comments like what you have done. You have no knowledge dose not mean it does not exist.

Correct. I meant "absolutely nothing left." But, if the concept of matter/antimatter is correct, then, matter can be destroyed, so there may be another way to get rid of matter completely, short of a matter/antimatter reaction, I just have to figure out how with a little help from my friends.

If you use an "matter/antimatter reaction" to get rid of your trash, please do it on some other planet. The amount of energy released would vaporize us all. Try plugging a mass of one kilogram into Einstein's e = mc^2.

The expanded law of Conservation of Mass and Energy states that neither matter nor energy can be lost or destroyed, but only converted in form. But, leaving aside for the moment that we have no idea how to do such a thing without using anti-matter, the problem with totally destroying your trash, or rather, converting it totally to energy, is that it's one scary lot of energy, about 25 gigawatt hours per gram of trash converted, about equivalent to a 21.5Kt nuclear explosion. Not something you'd want to be doing in your back yard.

And of course, if we were to use anti-matter and we could harness that kind of energy density, there are some other problems, not the least of which is that anti-matter is the most fantastically expensive stuff there is. Probably a little expensive for getting rid of trash. It's also kinda hard to handle.

Is this sublimation? - When I hang my skivvies out on the clothesline on a cold winter day they freeze as stiff as cardboard. Then, a few hours later, in still below freezing weather, they are flapping merrily in the breeze, dry, and ready to wear.

"Of late, most temples in southern India have stopped lighting camphor in the main Sanctum Sanctorium due to heavy deposits of carbon"

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camphor#Uses

The point is that you can't destroy matter (exept by converting it to energy as in a nuclear bomb) when you burn camphor the waste products just happen to all be gaseous (initially).

A gentleman from Princeton, NJ, USA, proved that you can have a reaction involving mass and have no mass left. His theory was that E = mcc (sorry don't know how to do superscripts). Flip the equation and mass*(the speed of light squared) = Energy.

He also found it was not practical to do in relatively controllable small quantities. The guy's name was Einstein.

The guy imported from Germany?

Yes, as you stated he was imported from Germany. I like to say he was from Princeton because New Jersey takes pride in the fact that he resided in Princeton for quite some time. When I met him we were both residents of New Jersey. Obviously that was some years ago and I didn't appreciate the few moments as much as I do now.

try cuantum physics. Hit it with....well...antimatter and you're done

this is the correct answer. (to absolutely eliminate the atoms) ga

It is strange that the very objective with which OP started the thread will be lost and drowned in people making fun of everything. I see this going on another thread where there are nearly 300 respondents and still no solution in sight !!

1. Solution to getting rid of trash is not in resorting to magic.
2. Matter cannot be destroyed and hence I suppose the very concept with which OP has started the thread is not practical- as at present.
3. Recycle and Reuse is the only solution.
4. What is not bio-degradable- like plastic etc - actually came to us from Nature itself in the form of fossil deposits - in the form of crude and its industrial products.
5. Fossil deposits are unevenly distributed all over the world.
6. Historians have the concept of TIME CAPSULE - where they bury in a historical events in a capsule- hoping that someone in future will read and understand today's events.
7. So I suppose we also have to create future Fossil fuel mines, identify land and bury what is not bio-degradable (in the short run in our generation). I suppose what was not bio-degradable a million years back, became today's useful crude oil.
8. Use bio-degradable - by recycling and reusing by techniques known to man today.
   

Did you intend to be insulting? You imply that no solutions have been proposed, or corrections to the OP question... SCWO is an excellent solution to the OP's question, and the subject is thoroughly discussed in the book I linked. When the OP doesn't return to focus the thread, anything can happen. The humour found here is one of the best aspects of CR4.

7) Carbon deposits DID come from organic wastes (plants, insects, dinosaur bodies, etc) and converted by heat, pressure over time to become fuel-acious.

cheers,

Chris

Hi Chris,

According to the links you provided, SCWO may be just what I was looking for, and it seems that a few companies are already using it. I wonder if they could run the residual gases through a system to generate enough energy to self power the apparatus?

I don't know enough about it to say. At first blush, I imagine it would be rather like trying to generate energy from auto exhaust. I would suggest that all you can do is try to capture the heat from the output, and use it to preheat the water and waste, and thereby increase the efficiency of the system. I do understand it to be an energy intensive process. Also, I imagine the composition of the exhaust will vary depending on the waste that is in input. Therefore, any energy production aspect of the system would have to be able to handle variation in the energy supply, if such is actually feasible. I don't remember what the outputs are exactly, but I think that they were outlined in the book.

There is definitely more reading available and schematics for those who are interested. here and here. It's not for me at the moment. other commitments.

Chris

You probably meant what's the lowest temperature... It is the temperature that sublimates carbon.

Titi-the-rabbit.

Interesting comments and information, and I will go to the links, read the suggested books and articles, after which, I will pose another question. Thanks for all the replies.

You might find joy at a lower temperature than that of the sun if you employ the Einstein revelation which reveals that your mass of trash would be reduced to energy once it is accelerated to celerity (the speed of light).

Or is that celerity squared?

As a railroader envisions it.

Most folks think of burning something as heating the material to a temperature where an oxidation/reduction reaction occurs. We ASSUME that there will be available oxidizers and reducers available in the process.

Imagine using microwaves, masers, or lasers to heat materials in a special vacuum to such high temperatures that all molecular bonds are broken and the materials become separated into the component elements. Now imagine having done that, separating the elements through a series of processes. First removing the conductive metals (now gases) through electromagnetic processes, then separating the rest of the elements by other processes based on density or atomic resonant frequency.

We could take an old computer, grind it up, stick it in the chamber line, and recover the copper, silver, gold, and other valuable elements. We could then mix the rest of the stuff into whatever chemistry and physics will allow.

The possibilities are really quite endless - but there has to be the possibility of some net return on investment.

Gavilan

Hello Galvilan,

I thought about using lasers, but they do not seem to be cost effective at the moment.

Thanks,

AuxNymph

Actually, this is exactly the process of waste management first proposed (I think) by Gerard K. O'Neil in his High Frontier space colony concept. Put your trash at the focus of a big enough concave mirror in vacuum and it all falls apart into it's constituent elements, which can then be easily recycled into something useful. Unfortunately, it requires a hard vacuum and a lot of energy, so it's not real practical for Earth-bound use.

Nah, you're all very cold. I worked on the machine that has made the hottest temperature yet on Earth. That would be a staggering 4 trillion degrees C° (that's 4*10¹² C°). Not only is there something left afterwards, but its what the research is all about.

_{Seeing the thread's title, I just couldn't help myself.}

Yes, "something" is left, but nothing that could continue to harm the planet or life, or can is this "something" still toxic?

I must admit I don't know what you get after making a quark gluon soup. I'm not even sure if anybody does know. I'll have to ask somebody at work. It was only two atoms of gold colliding at a time so there's certainly not much of it, whatever it is?

I am surprised that so many people have responded to this thread trying to find ways of burning away so that no residue is ever left.

OP has expressed ways to burn away trash so that nothing is left behind. This very premise / concept itself should not be encouraged, or pursued. Mahatma Gandhi said, "If we follow concept of eye to eye, the whole world will be blind one day". We had the story in school of two cats fighting for butter and a monkey intervenes to divide equally between the two. But the two pans were always imbalanced, and the monkey used to eat away the difference. At the end - no butter is ever left for the cats.

OP and the general public should stop even thinking of burning away trash - otherwise in your won life time of say 10 to 15 years, NOTHING will be left on the earth. Recycle and reuse SHOULD be followed - at least in 90 to 95 % cases. There may be some exceptions (let it not be the Mionkey Justice).

So whether it is 3K Kelvin or 6K Kelvin or a nuclear reactor etc etc - is a not the question. Consequences have to be kept in mind- even before pursuing this thread.

By using the energy generated by burning trash, provided we get more out than we put in, we save in several ways, the least of which is the entire planet. Monkey Justice!!