Recycling the Heat of Cremation Does Not Equal Burning the Dead as Fuel

Casket enters crematory retort

In yesterday's Miller & McCune Environment article by Justin Nobel, the same old misconception about recycling the heat of cremation was trotted out and reinforced for dramatic effect.   

"Imagine a swimming pool heated by your dead grandmother. The town council in Redditch, England, recently approved a plan that will make this possible. "

Unfortunately, the laudable and important work of harnessing the wasted heat that results from increasing numbers of cremations in the US and in Europe continues to be hindered by the idea that the dead are used as fuel.  In fact, the fuel is natural gas, used to reduce human remains into water vapor, carbon and skeletal remains.  This combustion is already taking place all over the world, and that heat contributes only to warming an already overheated planet, while only miles away, coal is burned to produce electricity.

Using the waste heat of cremation to produce electricity for heating homes in Sweden, warming swimming pools in the UK, or cooling offices in Taipei results only in a more sustainable world for the living.  By allowing the natural gas waste heat to heat the pool, we can keep  Grandmother's cremation from damaging the environment. 

For more on this subject, read:

Swedish Town Recycles Heat from Cremation - Is it Green?

Recycling the Heat of Cremation: Taipei

Solar Cremation in India?

Solar Cremation may soon be an option at an innovative new crematory in the city of Barot, India. Special reflectors are used to heat the cremation chamber to very high temperatures, offering an environmentally friendly option to electric power and traditional pyre cremations currently employed in India.

Here are excerpts from the Times of India, and the Meri News:

The crematorium has been built as a chamber with special scheffler reflector developed specifically for this concept. The reflectors are designed to heat a two meter long crematorium chamber to above 700 degrees centigrade. "The facility was made operational on an experimental basis recently. It will be commissioned within two months and shall be free of cost for everyone using it," said trustee Uday Dalal. The traditional system of cremating people on woodpile consumes over 300 kilogram of wood. Many trees are felled to meet the requirement. The old method the woodpile was then to some extent replaced with electric and gas fired chambers. Times of India

Contrary to popular perception, electric crematoriums also lead to more pollution than the traditional Hindu style of cremation, involving burning the body on a pyre. The UNDP report informs that electric cremation is nearly seven times more intensive in terms of emission of green house gases as compared to the traditional Hindu style. Solar crematorium also appears to be a viable option, suggests V Ramesh of Karnataka Renewable Energy Development Limited. India is the front runner in this regard, with Baroda, a city in Gujarat equipped with the world’s first solar crematorium. It was developed by Wolfgang Sheffler, a Swiss national and Ronnie Sabbawala of Rashron Energy and Auto limited. The body is burned exclusively using solar energy. The second solar crematorium is to be erected in Patna, Bihar, by 2009. But this method also has certain disadvantages. Solar crematoriums are impossible in many parts of India during the winters and monsoons. Also, they can be used only during the day as long as the sun shines. Meri News

Important questions remain on how well this method will work, and how widely it will be accepted in India, let alone elsewhere. It is important to keep in mind that the traditional cremation in India does not achieve the degree of combustion that is expected in North America and Europe. 700 degrees Centigrade is at the low end of incineration temperatures used in the West, so this method would be more time consuming and result in more recognizable remains. Adoption of this method may be difficult for families and operators unless the technology advances, and higher temperatures can be created in the chamber.

This is certainly a promising first step, though, and many of us will watch closely as solar cremation is tested in India.

Recycling the Heat of Cremation: Taipei

In January, I posted a story about a town in Sweden that decided to recycle the heat from it’s crematory. This concept seemed creepy to some of the residents, but it’s important to remember that natural gas, and not the human remains, is the fuel creating the heat and energy. It is the enormous amount of heat required to accomplish the combustion of the remains that is tapped to generate the energy. By recycling this heat, the energy is not just lost to the atmosphere, and cremation becomes a greener process in the bargain.

Now recycling crematory heat is in the news again. As reported in the Taipei Times on October 7th, Taipei City Government has plans to recycle the heat of cremation at one of the City’s public funeral parlors. Heat transfer machines will transform the heat of cremations into electricity that could, in turn be used to power air conditioning in the waiting room of the facility.

Again the emotional responses to recycling are mired in the misconception that the bodied are providing the fuel to produce the electricity.

Here is an excerpt from the Taipei Times article:

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City Councilor Chuang Ruei-hsiung (莊瑞雄) yesterday challenged the office’s plan and urged it to take public perceptions into consideration. “I admire the city government for having such a creative idea, but for family members, it is just creepy to have air conditioning generated from burning bodies,” he said. Chuang said the energy could be put to other purposes out of respect for the feelings of the mourners.

Clearly if this kind of recycling is to move forward, the hurdle of this misconception will need to be overcome.

Swedish Town Recycles Heat from Cremation - Is it Green?

http://www.andreagalvani.com/

Photo by Andrea Galvani

In the news today on treehugger.com, was a story of a Swedish town that after evaluating the environmental impact of their crematory, decided to recycle the heat normally released from the retort, back into heating the building, and in turn into the town. At first this may seem like they are heating their town by burning bodies, but that is not the case at all. Cremation requires an enormous amount of energy to accomplish the combustion of a body. The body is not fuel, natural gas is. What is happening, is that the heat that is used for the combustion is rerouted back into the system, rather than just being released into the atmosphere.

Whether this recycling is really 'green' depends upon your perspective. It is greener than cremation without the recapture of heat energy, but it is certainly not the 'greenest' way of dealing with human remains. In my opinion, promession is ultimately the greenest, and following that, would be local burial in a burlap shroud, we would go quite a way down the list before arriving at cremation. Certainly this not the greenest or most efficient way to heat the town, either.

Perhaps though, like most of us, it is somewhere in the middle. Most people would like to be as green as possible while still giving priority to other concerns, and for those who desire cremation, for whatever reason, this is a greener cremation. In funerals, I have found that green is more often a matter of degree than an absolute.

I would liken this recycling to requesting memorials rather than flowers at a funeral service. You are channeling energy to what you see as a positive direction. Some people will still send flowers anyway, and that's okay too. In the end it's about showing support to the family and acting in the spirit of the one who has died, not a fundraiser or telethon.

http://flickr.com/photos/samanthalamb/249352861/

October 2009 update, Taipei Funeral Parlor plans to recycle the heat from cremation