Talk:Promession
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[edit] Improper Title
Ecological Burial appears to be a trade name or at least a marketing term for Promessa used almost exclusively by the company in question. This article should be renamed - Promession.
United States Patent 5701642 - An ecological burial apparatus and method are accomplished by placing a corpse into a coffin structure made of a material containing a nutrient or fertilizer or combinations thereof. The corpse and coffin structure are buried in the ground and a tree is planted above the coffin structure so that when the coffin structure biodegrades the nutrient or fertilizer or combinations thereof are capable of being supplied to the tree to create an ecologically sound environment.
United States Patent 6516501 - Method and apparatus for ecological burial, an urn which comprises a series of pod-like containers made of compressed organic matter, porcelain, and glass, designed to function as cinerary urns (i.e. receptacles for human ashes) is disclosed. The urn is meant to interact with its surroundings by dissolving into it, and eventually producing a living monument, in the form of a tree, or a plant, in memory of the deceased person whose ashes it contains.
Searching the Centre for Natural Burial website (with an archive of over 300 natural burial articles dating back to 1995) with the search string "ecological burial" returns a single article (which is NOT related to Promessa) while searching for Promessa or Promession returns half a dozen articles each. The popular media does not recognize "ecological burial" with this process.
The term ecological burial is confusing with the practice of burial in an eco-cemetery. Eulogy4Afriend (talk) 03:43, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Needs a Rewrite
I seriously doubt the real ecological friendliness of this method of funeral, for one thing why would it be necessary to freeze the body in Liquid Nitrogen? Surely it would be realized that that amount of liquid nitrogen would be extremely environmentally destructive and energy consuming to produce, how is that environmentally friendly? It sounds like a good way for a company to get money out of some gullible environmentalists. Surely a much more Eco-Friendly and much less costly way of disposing of a body would be to simply let it decompose naturally, i.e. let it be buried and eaten by Worms and Bacteria. I can understand the removal of Toxic chemicals from the body but surely the process described if overkill, I would suspect that with all the above the process would generate more C02 than a normal burial. Finally this article sounds like it was written by the people who "invented" this method, and the links to the company seem to further imply this, it needs to be rewritten with a NPOV. --Hibernian 07:12, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
P.S. I've added a Non-NPOV template to this article, someone should review it and rewrite accordingly. --Hibernian 10:58, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
- It does read a bit like a promotional piece, written at least by someone who approves of the method, whether or not they have a business connection to it. But do you have any hard data on negative aspects of it -- the effects of liquid nitrogen, and so on? Without that, about all that can be done in the way of a rewrite would be to tone down the approving language.
- Miss Lynx 17:44, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
"for one thing why would it be necessary to freeze the body in Liquid Nitrogen?" So it will shatter when vibrated. The aim is to reduce the body to a dry powder. I've read (in New Scientist if I recall correctly) that plants love the stuff.
- Nitrogen is a common element of the atmosphere. When it evaporates, it combines into N2 molecules and resumes its natural place as a component of air. They also dry out the remains before burial, so most of the nitrogen and water would be gone before you went in the ground. How does the saying go, that without water, we are nothing but a few dollars' worth of chemicals? MFNickster 07:22, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
I don't think Hibernian was questioning the effects of nitrogen on the environment, but the production of that quantity of liquid nitrogen's effect on the environment. --saisugoi 13:45, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
- Indeed I was not questioning weather Nitrogen is harmful to the Environment, obviously it isn't, I am however questioning why it is necessary, in a so called ecological funeral, to use all these Industrial Processes, which would be harmful to the environment (such as creating and using Liquid Nitrogen and this "Vibrating" thing to). Can anyone tell me what the Carbon footprint of this Method is? I would bet it is significantly larger than a normal burial.
- --Hibernian 07:54, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
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- Commercial liquid nitrogen is produced by the fractional distillation of liquid air. xygen, argon, krypton, neon, and xenon are produced by the same process. Commercial demand of oxygen (both gaseous and liquid) is huge, so liquid nitrogen is really just a byproduct. The cost of liquid nitrogen (about $0.30/gal IIRC) is mostly in transportation and depends on how close you are to a liquid air plant. Refrigerating all that nitrogen until use does take energy, but it also takes a lot of energy and wood to make a modern coffin. Homo stannous 02:15, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
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- Furthermore, the article states that the purpose of turning the body to dust is to permit aerobic decomposition rather than anaerobic decomposition. I don't know how much that helps (I've heard elsewhere that aerobic decomposition is dominant only in the top 6" of soil), but anaerobic decomposition produces methane, which is a much worse greenhouse gas than CO2. I suspect that the only reason why they dry the body afterward is to keep the coffin from getting soggy. Homo stannous 15:40, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Needs additional info
This seems extremely short on info and lacks significant justification of any of the data in it. It does not even include any info on 3rd party appraisals of the environmental soundness of the procedure.
Also I've never heard of there being any environmental harm to slow decay rates of standard burials. As of cremation, fillings haven't used mercury for decades, and are generally removed before cremation anyways. Also, isn't all the carbon in a human body originally from plants eaten by the person or the things that the person ate, and thus technically not adding significant CO2 to the atmosphere? There is hardly any information on these questions.RuediiX 13:56, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
AFAIK, all burial methods will result in all the CO2 eventually going into the atmosphere, with the exception of embalming.
The person's diet has little to do with it, except that if they are obese, then it can actually take less energy to cremate them, because the fat burns like fuel. It's grotesque to consider such things, but that's the scientific fact.
People are unlikely to have toxic substances in them unless they died from poisoning, because what is toxic to the environment is typically toxic to humans, especially since it will have the highest concentration in the person. That is probably why they stopped using mercury fillings. Other types of implants are intentionally inert so they won't react biologically. --Mikiemike (talk) 11:25, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Energy Analysis
This is kind of a morbid topic, but I am interested in it from the point of view of energy conservation and environmental responsibility.
Here is some info about the energy requirements of cryogenic freezing compared to cremation. The human body is anywhere from 55% to 78% water depending on body size. (source: The Water article)
Much of the energy required for cremation is the heat needed to convert water to steam. By my calculations,
To heat water from 20 deg.C to 100 deg.C is: 334.5 J/g
To make steam is: 2258 J/g
Total heat added: 2593 J/g
Much of the energy required for cryogenic freezing is for freezing the water, and in general just cooling a mass down to 77 kelvin.
To cool water from 20 deg.C to 0 deg.C (273 K) is: 83.63 J/g
To freeze H2O is: 333.55 J/g
To cool ice from 273 K to 77 K is: 456.62 J/g
Total heat removed: 874 J/g
The ratio is a factor of 3 almost exactly, however we're not done yet. We must consider the second law of thermodynamics. To heat something requires heat energy, however, to cool something below ambient temperature requires work energy or electricity that must be generated from heat energy. So electricity might be generated from heat at 33% efficiency. A common non-cryogenic Rankine cycle freezer might have a coefficient of performance of about 3, thus removing 3 units of heat for every 1 unit of work input. So overall it takes at least one unit of heat energy burned in an electric generator to run a freezer that will remove one unit of heat energy at 0 deg.C. It should be considered whether this is cold enough to make tissue brittle. To cool even further, a good cryogenic cooler will only remove 1 unit of heat at 77 kelvin for every 20 to 25 units of work, so the coefficient of performance is only 4% - 5%.
For example the coefficient of performance of a Stirling engine cryocooler is about: COP = 0.0015 * Tc - 0.065 , where Tc is the cooler temperature.
The average COP of the Stirling cryocooler from 273 K to 77 K is (0.2).
The electricity needed:
To cool H2O from 293 K to 77 K, with Stirling Cryocooler only, is: 4424 J/g
To cool water from 293 K to 273 K with Rankine 27.9 J/g
To cool ice from 273 K to 77 K with SCC is 2312 J/g
To cool H2O from 293 K to 77 K with SCC and Rankine 2340 J/g
Clearly it's most efficient to use a Rankine freezer to freeze the water, and then use the Cryocooler to go down to 77 K. If we assume electricity is generated from heat at 33% efficiency, then it takes 7091 J of heat to create 2340 J of electricity.
If my calculations are correct, then it takes 2.75 times more energy to cryocool H2O than it does to turn it to steam.
However, this energy need not be wasted, since much of it can be reused.
The Stirling cryocooler can run in reverse, to efficiently move heat from warm water to the cryocooled ice. This would actually generate electricity! thus replacing some of the electricity that was used initially. Also the use of recuperation and counter-flow heat exchangers changes everything, including for the method of boiling off the water. In that case both processes could have very high energy efficiency.
Another possibility is freeze drying.
Data was obtained from Wikipedia, and Sunpower.
