Carpet, Wood Chips, Asphalt Shingles, coal, rubber tires ect..... expirements

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Its a good point of discussion, if nothing else. The fact is that when we choose to live in close proximity to others (Long Island, for instance), I think we should be held to a high standard of certain behavior...for instance, without decent automobile emissions regs those on LI (and in Europe!) would be breathing dirtier air and getting more diseases.

I live in a hollow, which is in a valley - there is only one wood burner in the general area, and I can smell it pretty heavily when I go outside to take the dog for a walk. So anytime there is ANY density of population, the effect on other people has to be taken into account.

The OWB makers, dealers and (yes) some owners have brought the regs on themselves...by smoking up entire valleys (I have seen this in VT) and burning tires, stumps, trash etc. - This is not, IHMO, a case of too much regulation, but a case in which the industry and users failed to uphold the basics of keeping their smoke to themselves.

Whether 300 feet or 1000 feet, or whether 10 acres of 100, that is still not an excuse to pollute excessively. This country is shared with 300 million other people - where ever one happens to live, and that requires that we each do our part.

Clean burning appliances can (and could have) been made at very little additional cost, especially when the excess fuel use and poor air quality is taken into consideration. In my opinion it is pay now or pay later.
 
Payton,

Do you have a large amount of this available to you?

Can you tell it from other platics? It says that it makes up 30% global bottiling
Is it closer to 100 percent in US?
 
well most of it has a 1 is the arrows. and says PET or PETE under the recycling arrows.
 
There's a tremendous garbage problem in the modern world and we are trucking vast quantities of it many miles to fester and leach into the groundwater and be a "present" for future generations. Maybe one day we can design clean burning, medium size incinerators with extremely low emissions for apartment buildings or institutions so this waste could be used to provide heat in winter and even a little power.

Or we could reduce our garbage production.
 
payton said:
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene_terephthalate

PET, as with many plastics, is also an excellent candidate for thermal recycling (incineration) as it is composed of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen with only trace amounts of catalyst elements (no sulphur) and has the energy content of soft coal.

Payton

Are you saying that it's probably OK to burn PET, payton? Cause I throw out quite a bit of it.
 
First of all, it takes a lot of bottles to make a pound! So much for the energy value......

And, keep in mind that "thermal incineration" refers to an industrial process (as T mentioned earlier), where temps and other stuff are carefully monitored.

I think a lot of this stuff is already burned for fuel value - I remember seeing trash sorting machines that ended up using whatever was left to make pelletized fuel - but, again, this was for use in high-temp incinerators.
 
I guess that's my question. The Wiki quote seems to suggest that there isn't anything particularly hazardous contained in this type of plastic, which to a non-chemist like me, implies that it would be safe to burn at any temperature. If that's the case (and I'm not suggesting that it is), then it would make more sense to burn it than ship it to a landfill. Of course, if it's recycled into something useful like polar fleece, then I guess recycling would be the highest and best use.

For the sake of harmony in the Boiler Room, I keep hoping this thread will die, but now you guys sucked me into it.

I'm going to go insulate some more piping.
 
i dont have the education to say that it is ok but i can't find any reason why it wouldn't be. i think that if you have JUST carbon hydrogen and oxygen it is impossible to create anything worse than CO, and that should not happen if you have excess oxygen.
 
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