Posted on 08/31/2011 7:08:13 AM PDT by tlb
A Glasgow-based company has installed its first commercial "alkaline hydrolysis" unit at a Florida funeral home.
The unit by Resomation Ltd is billed as a green alternative to cremation and works by dissolving the body in heated alkaline water.
The facility has been installed at the Anderson-McQueen funeral home in St Petersburg, and will be used for the first time in the coming weeks. It is hoped other units will follow in the US, Canada and Europe.
The makers claim the process produces a third less greenhouse gas than cremation, uses a seventh of the energy, and allows for the complete separation of dental amalgam for safe disposal.
"Resomation was developed in response to the public's increasing environmental concerns," company founder Sandy Sullivan told BBC News. "It gives them that working third choice, which allows them to express those concerns in a very positive and I think personal way."
The system works by submerging the body in a solution of water and potassium hydroxide which is pressurised to 10 atmospheres and heated to 180C for between two-and-a-half and three hours.
Body tissue is dissolved and the liquid poured into the municipal water system. Mr Sullivan, a biochemist by training, says tests have proven the effluent is sterile and contains no DNA, and poses no environmental risk.
The bones are then removed from the unit and processed in a "cremulator", the same machine that is used to crush bone fragments following cremation into ash. Metals including mercury and artificial joints and implants are safely recovered.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Even more green would be to dump granny’s body on the roadside and let the buzzards finish her off. Talk about cost effective and you could take the kids out to witness the recycling process.
Exactly. I drove by an old Catholic cemetery yesterday, and on the gate was written something like, “In this hallowed place and in loving memory rest the bodies of the Christian faithful who await the return of their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
They would be wasting potential biodiesel wouldn’t they?
Years ago a woman went missing. Years later, the level of the river dropped considerably and there was her body still in the car. The car had gone off the road and ended up right by some guy’s water pump. Ick.
Sounds like “Mob Technology” you know to make people “disappear”.
So they are going to build rendering plants? Wonderful smells come from those places.
Oh that ought to sit well with the public.
Our local NIMBYs complained about the smoke from a new crematorium.
I wonder what they would say about “stuff” in their town drinking water? They would blow a gasket!
Just build a bigger hopper....
Hmmm.
Deboning people and spraying their remains into the water system.
Now there’s a job.
If the refractory is running right there should be no smoke at all except a little puff of white stuff at the start when the cardboard box burns. Unless someone is cremated in a wooden casket (it has happened) or the temperature is too low, you won't see anything at all. I believe the NIMBYs imagine more smoke than there really is.
They were concerned on the “effects on their health” and mercury -
http://azstarnet.com/news/article_7cb329ae-dce1-5e44-b241-c34f7f5522ca.html
http://home.comcast.net/~rfurash/cmnotes.htm
But they missed all of the deadlines for protesting the building and zoning permits - the crematorium is now in operation.
From last March:
Judge stops Ohio funeral home from liquefying bodies
(Columbus, OH) -- For two months, a funeral home in Columbus, Ohio has been the only one in the state, and maybe the country, to offer an unusual alternative to cremation.
But now, the Department of Health is stepping in to stop it.
The controversial procedure is called alkaline hydrolysis. It converts body tissues to liquid that is then flushed into city sewers. A similar version of the process is used on animal carcasses at the Ohio Department of Agriculture. The Department of Agriculture says it's a more environmentally-friendly way to dispose of bodies.
But state health officials say it's not an acceptable way to dispose of bodies.
According to the Columbus Dispatch, Edwards began using the process in January and had disposed of 19 bodies with it, until the state stopped the funeral home from doing it last week.
http://ozarksfirst.com/fulltext?nxd_id=428566
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