Jakarta –
The amount of carbon (CO2) emissions has a negative impact on survival. High carbon emissions cause sea level rise, infectious diseases, and even global warming.
Currently, CO2 levels in the atmosphere exceed record levels. Students from Airlangga University (Unair) found a solution to these gas emissions.
Rais Al-Athar Antoni, an Industrial Engineering student at the Faculty of Advanced and Multidisciplinary Technology (FTMM), researched the benefits of smoke filters in reducing carbon emissions. He found that one of the significant causes of increasing carbon emissions is waste.
“Indonesian people, especially rural areas, still tend to practice the behavior of burning waste at the household level,” he said on the Unair website, Monday (18/12/2023).
Type of Combustion
Burning waste can produce methane gas and carbon dioxide gas. Burned waste has a different composition of organic and inorganic waste. With a greater organic waste composition, more methane gas will be produced.
In general, there are two types of combustion. First, complete combustion of carbon compounds is a combustion reaction that produces final products in the form of carbon dioxide and water vapor. This reaction takes place perfectly if all carbon atoms are completely oxidized to carbon dioxide and all hydrogen atoms are completely oxidized to water vapor.
Second, incomplete combustion of carbon compounds is a combustion reaction that produces final products other than carbon dioxide and water vapor. The reaction is incomplete if all carbon atoms are not completely oxidized to carbon dioxide or all hydrogen atoms are not completely oxidized to water vapor.
“This burning produces pollutants such as CO2 gas (causes global warming), CO gas (which is toxic in the blood), SOx gas (causes acid rain), Nox gas (causes the formation of smog), and particulates (C and Pb) “Trash burning is a type of incomplete combustion,” he said.
Offer a Solution with Incineration Smoke Filters
Rais offers a solution in the form of using smoke filters. One of these smoke filters is an incinerator which is a tool for burning solid waste.
Combustion at high temperatures produces heat energy which can be used to become electricity. The use of incinerators for household waste management is a method that continues to develop with significant advantages and challenges.
“Apart from that, incinerators can convert waste into energy. So they contribute to lower carbon emissions compared to landfills,” he said.
Implementation Challenges
However, Rias found that implementing incineration requires high investment and operating costs. Apart from that, the threat of toxic pollutant emissions still exists even though scrubbing technology is available.
Another thing is that recycling and waste reduction efforts are hampered. Moreover, according to Rias, in developing countries where organic waste with high water content is minimally sorted, it is considered less practical than a composting system.
Nevertheless, he suggested the need for flexible solutions and strict regulations to minimize emissions and ensure the sustainability of incineration.
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(land/gas)
2023-12-18 13:00:00
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