Smoking when not enough

1993/02/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Osasuna

A French company has announced its intention to build a new plant of 60 million francs to treat hospital waste. Hospital waste is burned at 850ºC in common use ovens.

This temperature has been considered adequate since the bacteria more resistant to heat do not exceed 400 °C. In this plant will be built an oven with plasma burners so that the combustion occurs at a temperature of 1,600 °C.

What is the reason why such high temperatures are used if not necessary and the costs are higher? The company that wants to start the kiln thinks that people are very distressed about the future of the hospital's waste, so it is better to keep quiet than smoking, so to speak. Others do not consider it suitable, since conventional burners do not consume electricity and those of plasma have a consumption of 4,000 kWh. On the other hand, the gases generated in both cases must be filtered before being evacuated.

The new burner, called Plasmapole, has been developed by the French aerospace company and considers that the last remains obtained with this system are more stable and safe than those obtained with the use of conventional burners.