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The Engineering of Landfills

practical.engineering

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Re: The Engineering of Landfills

#311

Post by actionfromafar »

viridian wrote: post #279
badpun wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prohibit importing non-compliant goods. Do compliance checking in ports and punish local importers, both companies and their owners/executives, for noncompliance.

I don't think the political will to do this exists. From the perspective of the state we care way more about drugs than we do about plastics, but people have been ordering asthma drugs, psychedelics, stimulants, steroids, and retinoids from Indian pharmacies successfully for at least a decade now, which makes me think that it's a hard problem to solve at scale.

I don't think the political will exists do much of anything which is hard, definitely not to coördinate laws on plastics. But to compare import of stimulants to plastics... I don't think it's the same thing. Nobody is going to gray import a plastic toothbrush from China just to get that extra cadmium.

Re: The Engineering of Landfills

#312

Post by cm2012 »

CoffeeOnWrite wrote: post #291
strken wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The largest open cut mine in the world, Bingham Canyon, is more than ten times as deep. While it's not a good idea to just chuck stuff into an abandoned mine, the effort to excavate a hole that size is doable for a single site operated by a single company employing 2000 workers over a century. It's pretty trivial in comparison to any other environmental problem.

> hole that size Bingham Canyon is roughly cone shaped, not comparable to the rectangular prism described above. To achieve comparable volume of the rectangular prism, you will need to dig a much deeper cone. https://www.mining-technology.com/features/feature-top-ten-d...

Quick calc: An 1000 yard deep cone with 35 mile diameter has 3x as much volume as a rectangle shaped hole 100 yards deep with 35 miles on each side.

Re: The Engineering of Landfills

#313

Post by bcantrill »

lproven wrote: post #307
bcantrill wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feels like we're catching a stray over here.

Yup. I would really like to write about what you guys are doing, because it seems fascinating. But it feels to me like it's 95% podcasts, videos, and online chats, and I just do not have time for that. (And I'm about 9 timezones away or something.) I try to produce 2 articles a day, and to do that, I read tens of thousands of words of info a day... Speech just isn't fast enough. If it's not text, I simply can't cover…

The podcasts are more like 1% -- most of what we have done is via the written word; see our RFDs[0] or our docs[1]. (And at the risk of being too on brand, it is worth listening to our recent podcast episode on RFDs themselves.[2])

[0] https://rfd.shared.oxide.computer/

[1] https://docs.oxide.computer/

[2] https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/rfds-the-ba...

Re: The Engineering of Landfills

#314

Post by eru »

hmottestad wrote: post #302
eru wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could just not burn the stuff, and capture the carbon directly in unoxidised form.

Or we could just stop pumping up oil and gas from the ocean floor and then not make any plastics in the first place.

Plastics are useful (to many people).

If all the externalities get priced in, you can let people decide for themselves what they want and need.

Re: The Engineering of Landfills

#315

Post by eru »

renhanxue wrote: post #304
eru wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With the energy loss over the distance needed (you basically need southern Italy/southern Spain for any reliable sun during the Swedish winter), that becomes too expensive to be practical. Can't be worse than that cable from Australia to Singapore? > Not to mention now you have a domino dependence, where a few bad days of weather in the Mediterranean can take out multiple countries at once, instead of Spain/Italy b…

Some numbers: Swedish electricity production in 2023 was 163 TWh. It's for all practical purposes 100% renewable or nuclear, with a mix of approximately 40/30/20/10 hydro/nuclear/wind/other, where "other" contains 2% solar and the rest is pretty much just electricity byproducts from district heating. Also in 2023, district heating delivered a total of 53 TWh to customers. About two thirds of this came from waste and…

Thanks!

Re: The Engineering of Landfills

#316

Post by eru »

sofixa wrote: post #284
eru wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With the energy loss over the distance needed (you basically need southern Italy/southern Spain for any reliable sun during the Swedish winter), that becomes too expensive to be practical. Can't be worse than that cable from Australia to Singapore? > Not to mention now you have a domino dependence, where a few bad days of weather in the Mediterranean can take out multiple countries at once, instead of Spain/Italy b…

> That's what peaker plants are for. Unless you can wish natural gas into existence, that means keeping a lot of infrastructure and storage just in case.

Yes, but a lot less than using natural gas for your base load.

Re: The Engineering of Landfills

#317

Post by eru »

barbazoo wrote: post #287
eru wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See also the German 'Green' party whose policies have led to lots and lots more CO2 emissions over the years.

Is that actually true? If you mean "over the last 20 years", then no, they weren't even a governing party between 2005 and 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Federal_Republic_of_Ge... You're perhaps talking about the downstream effects of sunsetting nuclear energy but even since then, the ratio of renewable energy has only increased. So what do you mean exactly? https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/ger…

Yes, I was (partially) talking about sunsetting nuclear energy, which they had a major part in (though some of that was indirectly).

They are also against fracking, which indirectly leads to more coal burning. Which is worse.

> [...] the ratio of renewable energy has only increased. So what do you mean exactly?

I would look at the CO2 emitted per Joule or something like that. Ie something that puts nuclear and coal into different baskets.

Re: The Engineering of Landfills

#318

Post by albrewer »

seb1204 wrote: post #262
sofixa wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Burning waste still releases harmful toxins into the environment and contributes to greenhouse gas emissions – even if it reduces landfill methane, which is a potent contributor to climate change This is not axiomatic. The gases from the incineration can be put into productive use (cf. Vienna heating and providing hot water off of their incinerator), and the harmful stuff can be filtered (cf. Vienna where the incin…

Yes they exist and they work. However to build them requires stringent regulations to make them a viable cost solution. If it is ok to blow out the toxic smoke the high end solution will not be built. The best thing is still avoiding waste.

> However to build them requires stringent regulations to make them a viable cost solution

In the US, the EPA has had regulations around this since the late 70's; it's a cost of doing business at this point, not a wild new theoretical rule framework.

Re: The Engineering of Landfills

#319

Post by sitkack »

Rygian wrote: post #153
sitkack wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, would be a great way to consume free solar during the brightest part of the day. Electricity in -> bulk chemical feedstocks out and no long distance transportation, handling and disposal costs. The nice thing about plasma burners is that you can capture the resulting syngas and not just exhaust tons of CO2 into the atmosphere as with an incinerator.

The Wikipedia page describes it as net positive in energy. Why consume solar?

I am envisioning running it as a way to convert CHON (garbage) into a feedstock and not as an energy source with steam boiler and turbine.

Re: The Engineering of Landfills

#320

Post by kortilla »

Sammi wrote: post #241
kortilla wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False choice. Don’t burn anything.

How is peat a false alternative? It is literally what Swedes would burn if they didn't burn their waste. There exists no practical alternative atm. Sure it's worth working towards another alternative, but we also need to not freeze right now.

It’s a false alternative because you don’t need to burn anything for heat.
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