MadSci Network: Chemistry
Query:

Re: Ash...Can it burn again???

Date: Tue Dec 6 10:06:04 2005
Posted By: Dan Berger, Faculty Chemistry/Science, Bluffton University
Area of science: Chemistry
ID: 1133810954.Ch
Message:

Mine is a simple question. Is there anything (that's cheap) that you can mix with ash to make it burnable again? I mean like some sort of chemical (preferably liquid) that, alone, won't burn, but with ash it will. Also (assuming that this is possible in the first place) Could it be low on pollution?

The thing about ash is that it's what's left over when everything that can burn, has burned. So it should be pretty clear that ash by itself can't burn.

Burning, as you probably know, is a chemical reaction in which the stuff you're burning combines with oxygen.

What you would need, to make ash burn again, is something that would chemically react with it in such a way as to remove the oxygen. What was left would then (possibly) be able to burn again. (Unfortunately, when wood or coal or oil burns most of the material is lost as the gas, carbon dioxide.)

In principle this could be done. However, anything with that strong an affinity for oxygen will always burn all by itself! For example, carbon in the form of coke or charcoal is used to remove the oxygen from iron ore (iron oxide). But, of course, coal and charcoal will burn. So that's one problem.

The other problem is that you can't get something for nothing (the Second Law of Thermodynamics). You'd expend more energy extracting the oxygen from the ash than you would get from reburning it. That's 100% guaranteed.

Sorry to rain on your parade... but your question was a good one (and not nearly so simple as you thought, eh?)

Dan Berger


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