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Solar plastic waste treatment

 Use concentrated solar rays to directly incinerate or heat waste treatment
 
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Instead of using tons of electricity and expensive means to reach high temperatures (300 for pyrogenic treatment and 5000 for PGP (plasma gas) why not directly use concentrated sun.

This project would get funded from both the solar guys, and the waste treatment people, and COULD even produce large amounts of electricity for a small area.

I'm saying COULD, because the more important part is having a non polluting system for treating the plastic bags and cups we use.

A sea based factory would be great, because then there would be an incentive to gather the tons of undersea plastic garbage accumulated since the birth of plastic circa 1964. Providing of course that the factory itself is non polluting.

—pashute, Apr 05 2011


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Annotation:







       I believe one of the products of burning plastics is dioxin.
—neelandan, Apr 05 2011
   

       Dioxin burns too. But what is the goal of treatment here? To convert it all to CO2? Or does this produce alkanes for fuel?
—bungston, Apr 05 2011
   

       What about just exposing plastic to un-concentrated sunlight, for longer periods of time?
—baconbrain, Apr 05 2011
   

       To produce electricity. But that should be the secondary cause. At such temperatures there are no dioxins released.
—pashute, Apr 11 2011
   

       "Dioxin" is not a unique substance; the toxic chemicals associated with incineration and bleaching are various chlorinated dibenzodioxins (which are (confusingly) collectively called "dioxin", but (even more confusingly) don't include the two isomers of dioxin itself).   

       These chlorinated dibenzodioxins are (obviously) only formed when chlorine is present. They are one of the reasons why PVC is more hazardous than other plastics when burned, and why it's safer to burn things further from the sea.   

       Dioxin proper (which does not contain chlorine) burns (as per [bungston]), but I gather that it's not trivial to use heat or burning to render chlorinated organic molecules safe, in general.
—spidermother, Feb 09 2012
   


 

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