Not the most efficient, but definitely the cleanest cost effective system for waste treatment.

Enables simple incineration (and preferably gasification) of any waste such as manure, plastic, tires etc. for creating steam and using it for power or for desalination.

Stage 1: Chillers powered by the waste heat lower a coolant's temperature.

Stage 2: Air conditioning lowers the coolant's temperature further, while sending heat to the water which will later become steam .

Stage 3: The exhaust (smoke) from the incineration is passed in pipes through a counter-current water pre- heater, heating the water to be turned to steam further, and cooling the exhaust.

Stage 4: The exhaust is passed through a heat exchanger passing much of its heat to the coolant, lowering the exhaust's energy, volume and pressure considerably.

Stage 5: The cold exhaust, is passed through a filter, loosing all heavy particles.

Stage 6: The remaining mostly clean exhaust is now passed through a large vegetation tower, cleaning it from CO2 and creating oxygen.

Stage 7: The gas, now mostly oxygen, is fed back into the process. Excess oxygen is released to the atmosphere.

The output of the process is steam. The input is used tires, manure, plastic or any other waste.

The initial cost of such a system shouldn't be too much, everything is standard equipment and making a tall tower with vines growing in them shouldn't cost much either.
-- pashute, Nov 15 2012

I like stage 6. After processing some tons of CO2 you will have heavy trees out there; and you need to do something with them. You could bury them to get oil some mileniums ahead. We could do this anyway (plant trees, let grow up, and bury them ) for clean up the atmosphere and prevent global warming. // The output of the process is steam.// And a lot of trees :-)
-- piluso, Nov 15 2012


Algae systems for power plants are widely researched, but to date have not been economically viable. As the technology improves that may change, but it is not there yet.
-- MechE, Nov 15 2012


This sounds like a lot of existing approaches, described in a not very believable way.
-- DrCurry, Nov 15 2012


No. The filtering of smoke is usually done with the least amount of energy, ie - passing through water and filter. My approach is to spend a percentage of the energy on cleaning the smoke, basically by cooling it. There would be no chimney for this plant.

[meche] I know. There's a claim that ... wait looked it up, its not a claim its official, that Israeli Electric Co developed an algae system with Symbiotic Ltd. for lowering emissions. It works at the Tel Aviv Rothenberg power plant. But I did not talk about algae. I'm talking about a large orchard or a vegetation tower.
-- pashute, Nov 15 2012


//The initial cost of such a system shouldn't be too much, everything is standard equipment and making a tall tower with vines growing in them shouldn't cost much either.//

Are you sure? The tower may have to be ... rather large.
-- Loris, Nov 15 2012


Algae is, by far, the most efficient possible carbon sink for this sort of operation. I'm aware of several different operations attempting this, and several that have in the past (and gone bankrupt). Anything else is going to have a much higher energy and infrastructure demand.
-- MechE, Nov 15 2012


//The gas, now mostly oxygen// sp. "nitrogen".
-- FlyingToaster, Nov 15 2012



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