Incineration

“ The various incinerator companies usually estimate the capacity of the plant at about one ton per 1,000 population.
Reports show that disposal by incineration in Ohio is confined to cities of from 20,000 to 80,000 population, and that its success has been confined to the very large and to the rather small cities of the country. Some assert that it is applicable in the very large cities only when the collection systems are suitable to provide for the burning of mixed 183refuse. In small cities it is the custom to cremate the garbage alone, the other classes of waste being dumped or buried. ”

“ For, admirable as is this method of disposing of the dead regarded from a hygienic standpoint, it has the fatal defect of lending itself most perfectly to the more subtle forms of murder, and especially to the administration of poison. By cremation all traces of the alkaloids, the toxines and the other organic poisons are utterly destroyed, while of the metals, the three whose compounds are most commonly employed for criminal purposes—arsenic, antimony and mercury—are volatilized by heat and would be more or less completely dissipated during the incineration of the body. ”

“ Equipment utilizing disposal technologies other than incineration equipment in (a) to detoxify toxic chemicals including but not limited to liquid neutralization, gas phase chemical reduction, supercritical water oxidation, direct chemical oxidation, solvated electron, and plasma arc processes. b.l. Liquid neutralization equipment, and specially designed waste supply and material handling systems, with reactor volumes of 0.100 m3 (100 litres) or greater, in which all surfaces that come into direct contact with the toxic chemicals are made from corrosion resistant materials. ”

“ Heat for destruction must be obtained not only from the garbage itself, but also from ashes and other combustible waste. It is here that the difference between destructors and crematories enters. In the former, heat is obtained from the refuse itself; in the latter, garbage is burned at the expense of coal, wood or oil. It seems to be the prevailing opinion that in order to make incineration a success the material must be burned at a high temperature and rapid rate of combustion.
Morse claims that destructors require twenty per cent. 182less area of ground, cost fifteen per cent. ”

“ The incinerator, besides being the burner of garbage, is a garbage container. It burns garbage without smoke, noxious gases and floating inorganic matter. If the stove could do this, the incinerator would not be necessary, as suggested above. But it can’t, especially if it be a gas or electric stove. Every incinerator, if it be any good at all, is so designed as not only to burn the waste but reburn the gases, etc., before the products of combustion reach the outer air.
Every manufacturer will tell you that his apparatus burns without smoke or odor. ”

“ The two main classes of incinerators are, (1) those that are installed in the cellar and there burn the garbage, which is dropped in a chute through a hopper installed by the sink or elsewhere in the kitchen (somewhat the way mail is dropped into the mail box through its chute) and (2) the incinerators which look like oblongly high stoves placed in a recess in the wall or against the wall in the kitchen where the waste is stored and burned. The cellar incinerator is connected with the kitchen, etc., often through the flue and the waste is dropped into a little hopper. ”

“ So almost in conclusion the incinerator is sanitary, destroys refuse, destroys it by burning not only the garbage but the products of the garbage combustion at a minimum expense, and it should sterilize itself and the flue in the process. ”

“ When coal is burned, gas, smoke and cinders or clinkers, constitute the waste and if these were not allowed to escape from a stove the fire would soon go out—the smoke and gas would smother it and the clinkers would prevent the circulation of oxygen and soon clog and fill the stove. The same is true in the body—the carbonic acid gas not being allowed to pass off would soon put out the fires of life; it would poison the body and stunt the action of the nerves. If the nitrogenous waste (like ashes and cinders) is not eliminated by the kidneys, one will die in convulsions in one or two days. ”

“ It may be asked, How is the decay, or fermentation, of vegetable matter, such as farmyard manure, caused? or rather, To what is it due? Decay of any substance is just its slow combustion or burning. When a substance unites with the active chemical element in air—the oxygen gas—it is said to be oxidised. Now, this union of a substance with oxygen is the explanation of burning, and the phenomena of burning and decay are explained by the same chemical operation. ”

“ Every one must fight the fly; and the moral of that is: the incinerator is one way of getting rid of garbage and at the same time starving out the fly.
There is no room in the house in which cleanliness is so important as in the kitchen; therefore, the garbage can, in most instances, militates against its absolute cleanliness. To be sure, there is one good can on the market with an automatic lid which is raised with the foot so that stooping is unnecessary. One touch by the foot on the pedal opens the can, and as soon as the foot [121] is taken off the pedal, the lid closes. ”

“ The consequence is that the body, when placed in the incinerator, is not, in a proper sense of the word, burned. It is reduced to ashes by the chemical application of intense heat. Gases are driven off or absorbed, and being carried down into the fire from the incinerator and led back and forth 25 feet through its flames, are utterly consumed. Even the smoke of the fire is consumed, and nothing can be seen issuing from the chimney but 153the quiver of the heat. ”

“ Fermentation is a subsequent low combustion of the vegetable oxydes or grain, that has undergone a previous, but partial combustion, something like the slightly charring, or oxydating of wood or pit-coal, by which the oxygenation is incomplete in both, and rendered more complete in the former. An ultimate combustion of the fermentable matter employed, is found only in the putrid process of fermentation, which is a final or total decomposition of vegetable and animal substances, in the actual combustion or burning of wood, charcoal, or bones. ”

“ The liquid has been in contact with dust-laden air by which it has been infected, and the infection must be destroyed. This is done by plunging the six tubes into a bath of heated oil and boiling the infusion. The time requisite to destroy the infection depends wholly upon its nature. Two minutes' boiling suffices to destroy some contagia, whereas two hundred minutes' boiling fails to destroy others. After the infusion has been sterilized, the oil-bath is withdrawn, and the liquid, whose putrescibility has been in no way affected by the boiling, is abandoned to the air of the chamber. ”

“ The air of mines is still further deteriorated by the consumption of oxygen, and the generation of carbonic acid gas, in the processes of respiration and combustion.
It results from the nature of the process of excavating the galleries, that almost all the contaminating influences exist in those very places where their powers must be greatest and most sensibly felt, viz. in the inner extremities of the galleries, where the air is stagnant, and where the miners pass nearly all the time they remain under-ground. ”

“ The method of conducting the process of calcination depends on the nature of the body operated on. Many substances, for delicate experiments, are calcined over a spirit lamp in a platinum spoon or crucible; others, in iron vessels or earthen crucibles, placed in a common furnace. When the action of the air proves injurious, as in the manufacture of charcoal, the process is performed in close vessels or chambers. In some cases the fuel is mixed with the articles, and they are both burnt together, as in the manufacture of lime, the roasting of ores, &c. ”

“ In the construction of the portable incinerator, the one that is placed in the room and not below stairs, you must be sure it is so built that the heat from burning is not communicated to the room to heat it up. ”

“ The contents of the kiln are then bathed in the heated oxygen and the condition of the burning is called oxidizing. When the combustion is incomplete, on the other hand, there is a deficiency of oxygen. The kiln is charged with hot carbonaceous gases and smoke, and these, being hungry for oxygen, will abstract it from any substance which may be present. This condition is called reducing because the compounds which exist in clay or glaze are deprived of oxygen and thus reduced to a lower state of oxidation. ”

“ Illuminating gas is obtained by the dry distillation of coal. The products of distillation are subjected on the gasworks to several purifying processes, such as condensation in coolers, moist and dry purifying, from which valuable bye-products (such as tar, ammonia, cyanogen compounds) are obtained. The purified gas is stored in gas holders containing on an average 49 per cent. hydrogen, 34 per cent. methane, 8 per cent. carbonic oxide, 1 per cent. carbon dioxide, 4 per cent. nitrogen, and about 4 per cent. ”

“ For it is well known, that the corrosive spirits (no less than fire) do burn some certain things; for not all things are made better by fire or corrosives, but most of them are absolutely spoyled by them. Some perchance will say, that such preparations of Magisteries are onely for to be reduced into a finer powder, that so much the sooner they may perform their operation. To which I answer, that pearls, corals, and other things of the like nature, if they be once dissolved by corrosive waters, and then precipitated and edulcorated, never or hardly can be dissolved again by acid spirits. ”

“ Imperfect sterilization shows itself in many cases by gas development within the tin, which causes the ends to become convex and drummy. More frequently than not the contents of the larger tins, containing meat or other animal products, are not absolutely sterile, but the conditions are mostly such that the organisms which have survived the cooking process cannot develop. When they can develop without formation of gas dangerous products of decomposition may be produced without showing themselves to taste or smell. ”

“ Many of these schists are of such a loose texture, and contain the pyrites in so fine a state of division, that the requisite heat is generated by the rapidity with which the several chemical changes proceed; others, from their compactness and deficiency in combustible matter, require calcining by a slow smothered fire. When the calcination is complete, the mass is lixiviated, the solutions are run into cisterns for evaporation, and when they have attained a certain strength, are precipitated with sulphate or muriate of potash or ammonia. ”

“ In zinc smelting risk of lead poisoning is great, no matter which process is in question, because of the high proportion of lead in the ore and work-zinc. Swedish blende contains as much as 9 per cent. ”

“ The inhalation of air, mixed with very little chlorine gas, has also been recommended. Wells, cellars, or other underground apartments, containing carbonic acid in poisonous quantities, may be freed from this gas by pumping it out in the same way as water, observing to allow the suction hose to fully reach the floor or bottom of the place. Fresh slaked lime or milk of lime, copiously thrown in, will have a like effect, by absorbing the gas. Free ventilation, whenever it can be established, is, however, not only the cheapest, but the most efficient remedy. ”

“ The local effects are mainly of three kinds, viz., corrosion, or chemical decomposition, as is seen in the effects of the strong mineral acids and alkalies; irritation or inflammation, varying from simple redness, in its mildest, to ulceration and gangrene, in its most severe degree, such as may result from the use of corrosive sublimate; and a local specific effect, produced on the sentient extremities of the nerves, as is felt on the local application of prussic acid, aconite, &c.
The remote effects are those influencing organs remote from the part to which the poison has been applied. ”

“ When formalin is poured into an open dish, it rapidly evaporates, or gives up its gas; and, if it be gently heated, this will be thrown off in such quantities as to completely fill the room and penetrate every crevice of it, and every fold of the clothing or hangings. One pound, or pint, of formalin will furnish vapor enough to disinfect a room eight feet square and eight feet high, so the amount for a given room can thus be calculated. The formalin vapor will attack germs much more vigorously and certainly if it be mixed with water vapor, or steam ”

“ Loss on Ignition.—The loss on ignition represents any hygroscopic moisture not removed by previous drying, all water in combination with mineral matters as water of constitution, all organic acids and ammoniacal compounds, all organic matter when the ignition is continued until the carbon is burned away, all or nearly all of the carbon dioxid present in carbonates, and, finally, some of the chlorids of the alkalies, if the temperature have been carried too high or been continued too long. ”

“ Another cause is, the existence of mineral matter, especially in limestone countries, producing diseases of the bladder. This is remedied in a measure by boiling, which secures a deposit of the lime on the vessel used. The third cause is, the corroding of zinc and lead used in pipes and reservoirs, producing oxides that are slow poisons. The only remedy is prevention, by having supply-pipes made of iron, like gas-pipe, instead of zinc and lead; or the lately invented lead pipe lined with tin, which metal is not corrosive. ”