Car wheel casings become heat and light

Domestic waste, old car wheel casings, industrial waste and even silt that remain after cleaning sewage outflows can successfully be turned into light and heat when incinerated, scientists at the Institute of Problems of Chemical Physics in Russia are claiming.

The technology has a rather complicated name "“ filtration combustion with superadiabatic warm-up. The essence of the development lies in the fact that all of the so-called pseudo-fuel is first transformed to gas in an airflow; then this gas is combusted. As a result the same light and heat is produced, for which to date has been necessary to literally let natural gas, coal and oil go up in smoke, fuel reserves which are far from endless in supply.

"Our method has high performance efficiency, almost 95%, and a record ecological cleanliness," explains Valery Steinberg, head of the Department of Combustion and Detonation of the Institute Problems of Chemical Physics RAS, where the basis of the technology was created. Such incineration, performed in phases, and the high temperatures facilitate the practical suppression of the formation of dioxins. Their content in the furnace gases, without any additional purification, amounts to ten-thousandths of a microgram per cubic metre of smoke; a good figure."

What is also surprising is that the method is non-demanding in terms of the primary fuel. Naturally, the air supply regime and certain other parameters have to be selected for each specific type of waste that predominates in the combustible mass. However, under the new technology, almost everything burns: domestic rubbish, oil slime and oil-refinery wastes, wheel casings, plastic, just as wastes from the coal mining and coal refinery, pulp and paper, chemical and paint-varnish industries, providing heat and light.