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Ultraboy94

Crematoriums used as power stations?

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Ultraboy94 said:

I don't think it's such a bad idea myself. I mean, people get cremated anyway, they might as well use the created energy for something. Maybe part of the future energy crisis will be solved with cremations.


That's what they tried to pull at the Nurnberg trials, but it just didn't fly back then.

Then again, to get some net energy from cremations you must start burning the body fat, rather than propane or other mineral fuels. So burning e.g. skinny, impoverished and hungry people like we're likely to be in the future, won't help much. And that's what gave the Nazis away at the Nurnberg trials: none believed them when they said they were doing it to support Germany's energy crisis during the war effort.

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I was going to be cryogenically frozen and preserved until such times that my remaining life force could be transferred into that of a machine. Preferably something that doesn't rust. To think that I might have to abandon my future plans of chronological librarianism and observation just to power a local swimming pool for 10 minutes doesn't fill me with distain for environmental dissolution.

No, you can feed me to the worms instead, providing there's still any space let in the ground. If not then...

Oh go on, fire away.

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st.alfonzo said:

I was going to be cryogenically frozen and preserved until such times that my remaining life force could be transferred into that of a machine.


Cryogenic freezing would just turn your body into a bloody, shitty slush once you were unfrozen. You've got the right idea, but the tech just ain't here yet.

Being-Buried-In-A-Coffin-With-Weapons-And-Having-A-Fake-Mausoleum-Space-Reserved-For-A-Weapons-Cache-For-The-Coming-Apocalypse master race here. U all jelly of my preparedness.

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Mr. Freeze said:

U all jelly of my preparedness.


What textures do you want for your toilet?

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Captain Toenail said:

Would a crematorium-powerstation not make a cool Doom level?


Well it's how hell get's it's electricity, no?

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EWWW DEAD PEOPLE ARE POWERING MY HOME

Actually, it's not a bad idea. :P

(Incidentally, I misinterpreted the thread title as "Power stations used as crematoriums", and thought there was gonna be some scandal involving people dumping their cadavers inside electrical power generators... or something to that effect.)

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How in the hell is this even reasonable? I can't imagine that enough people die in any given day and have chosen to be cremated for this to be of any real value. Plus I'm not sure of the efficiency of heat energy to electricity. Especially from a fire. Solar plants have hundreds of mirrors aimed at a single spot to boil water but the temperatures produced are pretty incredible compared to what you would get with a crematorium.

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If there were crematoriums powering my house that would mean there'd be a lot of dead peoples' spirits flying around my home and God knows I don't want that.

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Quast said:

the temperatures produced are pretty incredible compared to what you would get with a crematorium.


Not quite. The temperatures you get with any concentrating solar power technology cannot even be compared with burning a normal log of wood or a candle let alone a propane-powered crematorium.

And since they want to produce heat and not electricity, they can use a more efficient fluid heat exchange system rather than produce electricity from the heat and then using that to heat the water.

But yeah, overall, I think most of the cremation energy would come from the furnace's burning propane rather than the body's fat -remember, in order to get the body to burn first all that water in the tissues must evaporate, and then muscle mass and most connective tissues and bones will burn "dry", with little net output. Only if you burn obese and morbidly obese people you can get extra energy from the excess burning fat that works just like burning oil -damn that sounded so clinical.

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Some solar plants designs are capable of high temperatures though burning holes in the boiler is not a particularly productive use for the technology.

Back on topic - the Hobart Aquatic Centre uses a geothermal heat pump to get some of it's heating from partly-processed sewage (fortunately there's no smell) and I recall reading somewhere that in the 19th century mummies were so commonplace in Egypt they were sometimes burnt as fuel in steam engines.

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I'd like to be cremated, and I wouldn't mind it creating power. Sounds like a good idea.

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