As a former machinist and mechanical maintenance engineer by trade, I can attest crematoriums are a strange beast to work on. Bone fragments are left over because the crucible like structures in which bodies are immolated reach a relatively low temperature. Industrial processes routinely eclipse these by orders of magnitude and in doing so effectively vaporize and destroy anything left over. Alas, customers want proof and so certain inefficiencies are tolerated in order to deliberately generate an ash byproduct.
Most crematoriums include elaborate air filtration systems. These are far and away better scrubber systems than you would find at a chemical refinery but the media lifespan is very low, and the maintenance cost of these devices is nontrivial. The cost is worth it however...the stench of burning bodies is to be avoided in any way considering most crematoriums are adjacent to fairly residential areas. Most furnaces have a 'hard stop' at a certain number of operations to prevent any possibility of overwhelming the filters. There is also a specific mass limit to each cremation chamber, not unlike a normalizing furnace or heat treatment furnace.
Crematoriums hate two things as far as i can gather: medical implants and the obese. If enough furnace matter includes exotic plastics and metals, some fairly dangerous conditions can occur. certain plastics and magnesium parts for example can trigger a fire inside the furnace that can easily damage or destroy it. Crematorium furnaces are equipped with, in my opinion, a very limited amount of thermal refractory material compared to other industrial furnaces.
Finally the sad truth about obesity is that you'll pay triple for a cremation. Obesity increases the combustion byproduct and shortens the furnace filter and burner lifespan as it increases the time required to properly cremate the remains. large enough people require multiple furnaces.
Our thermal plant has a maintenance engineer that also works on crematorium ovens. I found him muttering, cursing, and swearing one day, obviously very irate, as he fiddled with some of our heating systems. I enquired, mainly to make light conversation, and he went on a tirade about home cheapskate crematorium manager had skimped on maintenance and that this had resulted in a breakdown mid-way through a ’ceremony’ and had required ”pulling the client out when he was only half done” and letting the chamber cool down so that the relevant part could be accessed.
That was really quite a nauseating thought. Must make for the shittiest maintenance request ever.
When they cremate pets they just toss a bunch of animals in the bin at the same time and then give each pet owner a proportionate amount of combined ash.
That's the low-cost option. When I had my cat cremated I opted for private cremation where each pet gets their own vessel in the crematory. (There can still be a tiny bit of ash mingling, as sometimes air currents will carry some flakes into adjacent vessels.)
That's the standard (cheaper) approach, but you can also pay a little more to have your pet cremated alone and get their ashes. My wife works in the funeral industry and she's done this with all of her pets that she's lost.
My family used to be in the funeral business, and as a kid I've gone on rides to pick up bodies in Hearses, dug and filled graves, and visited a crematorium.
My aunt was friends with the crematorium operator, and we got to visit one in operation. The operator was retelling the story about the big stain on the concrete floor near the furnace.
TLDR: There is a "formula" using body mass to determine whether they go in head- or feet-first. If you get it wrong, the fat sometimes liquefies and runs out onto the floor.
Whether this is true or whether he was just f'ing with a young kid, I don't know.
I just saw the construction of a crematorium on "How It's Made". Very interesting - this one had two chambers. The primary chamber for the body and then a secondary one connected with a sloping tunnel which was designed to incinerate any fluidic remains.
Perhaps this is a modern construction. It seems very logical that fluids would render from a body and need to be re-burned so this crematory accounted for that.
I believe we have a few crematoriums connected to the heat networks here in Sweden. Kind of creepy to think about, but creepy isn't a good argument against it so why not, I guess.
My father passed last week, maybe he heated up a small part of Stockholm already. I don't really know what happens next. Personally I don't care that much, I got my memories and that is enough for me. But based on what happened to the rest of my dead relatives he'll get a small plate with his name on at the corner of some church yard. It will be up for x years until they have to make room for the next batch. You can always pay to keep it up for maybe five or ten more years, but what is the point? Memories are free and worth way more than the tiny nameplate.
> You can always pay to keep it up for maybe five or ten more years, but what is the point? Memories are free and worth way more than the tiny nameplate.
In the US, it's often possible to find the gravestones of ancestors going back for hundreds of years, scattered across the country in various cemeteries. This makes genealogical research a little more fun, in that you can track down some physical remnant and memorial of the people you're looking for, and of course it also helps verify names and dates.
It never occurred to me that the same thing wouldn't be possible in other countries.
I've been doing a little genealogy lately and seen a few pictures of gravestones belonging to the people I'm related to that emigrated. Not a lot of other traces of them so thats pretty neat, sure!
Here in Sweden we have really good records that are open and free to search online. The church kept an eye on everybody back in the days so the only obstacle is not being able to read some priests old handwriting from the 1700s, or that everybody had the same names back then, "Anders Andersson" might be the worst example of that. I hope AI will take care of that, probably any day now. Might take some of the fun out of it though.
My mothers grandfather that died in 1938 still has his spot, it is going to be there for a few more years. I don't think anybody has visited it for a very, very long time. My mom didn't even know it existed until I found it online, so at least 60 years. I think the standard "lease" was for a really long time back then, and now when the grave yards are overcrowded you have to renew it every 10 - 15 years by default. A lot of people probably makes the first grave into a family grave. So you'll have grandmother, grandfather, father, mother, fathers second wife (awkward :P), and so on in the same grave.
> Are you suggesting that the furnace that heats your home is fueled by burning deceased people?
The furnace that heats his home is more likely fueled by natural gas, however the combustion chamber where that gas is being burned may also be used for cremations.
I'm pretty sure that humans make pretty lousy fuel.
“I shall not speak of the railway, for it is like any other railway—I shall only say that the fuel they use for the locomotive is composed of mummies three thousand years old, purchased by the ton or by the graveyard for that purpose, and that sometimes one hears the profane engineer call out pettishly, "D--n these plebeians, they don't burn worth a cent—pass out a King …”
>I'm pretty sure that humans make pretty lousy fuel.
Aside from moral/cultural qualms and a difficulty achieving scales of efficiency, there's no reason human remains couldn't be used to produce perfectly usable biodiesel.
Not like they are pumping around the ashes. It's worse to think about than it really is. It's just heat. Every now and then you think about where the water you're drinking have been in the past too, right?
What a well written article. But from personal experience, it's missing something.
My dad's funeral service was held in the crematorium. Afterwards they invited the closest family members to watch. Didn't warn us about what we were about to witness.
First, instead of the "nice" coffin with flowers on top, he was put into a cheap-looking, thin plywood crate filled with thin, twisted strips of paper. It looked like the paper equivalent of styrofoam peanuts. The gurney was carelessly lying crooked against a wall as if it had just rolled over and bumped to a stop.
Then they rolled it into the furnace in workmanlike manner and closed the room's blinds to block our view.
We all swore off cremation after that.
Please leave after the service. Don't watch your loved one's cremation, it'll be a horrible last memory that taints everything that came before.
Second, the cremains are in a sealed plastic bag, inside a cardboard box. After you scatter the ashes, what do you do with the box, the bag, and the last ashes in the bag? Throw them in your household garbage? (Illegal, btw)
It was my reminder that not everything has a "nice" interface.
I haven't been there, but I really don't think I can agree with that.
I would want to keep my eye on my relative until the body is no longer molestable. After that, I don't think I really give a damn, and they can just chuck the crispy blackened half-done body in the trash.
If you're in the SF Bay Area, I strongly recommend visiting The Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland.[1] It's one of the most amazing buildings I've ever visited in my life. It doesn't look like much from the outside, but inside it's like a labyrinth of urns. It's one of my favorite places to visit in the Bay Area. Very quiet and meditative place.
> “What is that?” I ask, pointing to one of the silver trays of remains.
> “That’s a bone fragment. Probably a disc vertebrae,” Koslovski says, adding, “You can learn anatomy here.”
> “These are green,” I say.
> “I don’t know why. It could be something the person was treated with. It’s hard to say. It could have been cancer.”
> The crematorium puts the bones and ash that remain into a pulverizer, not unlike a food processor. The remains are then put through a sieve and into a container for the family—but not always.
If the average person knew this, would they still regard cryonics as creepy and gross by comparison?
I would have expected to see this in the Atlantic, surprising that it was in Popular Mechanics. Very nicely written. Having lost my father-in-law late last fall, the story was a little difficult but it made me realize how much in common we all have when facing the loss of a loved one. And yes, my family is planning on spreading at least some of his ashes at his favorite golf course.
It is released into the atmosphere, and is a very significant source of environmental mercury pollution. More recent crematoria have scrubbers to specifically remove it from the flue stream.
Most crematoriums include elaborate air filtration systems. These are far and away better scrubber systems than you would find at a chemical refinery but the media lifespan is very low, and the maintenance cost of these devices is nontrivial. The cost is worth it however...the stench of burning bodies is to be avoided in any way considering most crematoriums are adjacent to fairly residential areas. Most furnaces have a 'hard stop' at a certain number of operations to prevent any possibility of overwhelming the filters. There is also a specific mass limit to each cremation chamber, not unlike a normalizing furnace or heat treatment furnace.
Crematoriums hate two things as far as i can gather: medical implants and the obese. If enough furnace matter includes exotic plastics and metals, some fairly dangerous conditions can occur. certain plastics and magnesium parts for example can trigger a fire inside the furnace that can easily damage or destroy it. Crematorium furnaces are equipped with, in my opinion, a very limited amount of thermal refractory material compared to other industrial furnaces.
Finally the sad truth about obesity is that you'll pay triple for a cremation. Obesity increases the combustion byproduct and shortens the furnace filter and burner lifespan as it increases the time required to properly cremate the remains. large enough people require multiple furnaces.