[TriLUG] OT - need a good local place to shred a lot of documentsin Durham

[Peter Neilson]

On Wed, 08 Aug 2012 16:43:30 -0400, Lance A. Brown <lance at bearcircle.net>  
wrote:

> On 08/08/12 16:38, Joseph Mack NA3T wrote:
>> On Wed, 8 Aug 2012, Chris Merrill wrote:
>>
>>> Coursely shredded paper, OTOH, burns very well, thanks to the high
>>> oxygen-to-paper content :>
>>
>> I've only burned piles of newspapers and scratch paper by the cubic  
>> foot and
>> it's all been densely packed.
>>
>> Does the coarsely shredded paper not smell when it burns?

The key to proper and complete combustion is a forced supply of air. This  
is best accomplished by putting holes in the bottom or lower sides of the  
barrel. No one does it that way, though. They either put in no holes at  
all, expecting the O2 to climb all the way down into the barrel,  
displacing the CO2, or else they perforate the barrel with a great number  
of holes, making the updraught ineffective.

If the fuel is tightly packed, then either it will take longer to burn, of  
the combustion will be less complete. this is where stirring or prior  
shredding may help.

Incomplete combustion forms smelly longer-chain residuals, but complete  
combustion leaves only the potassium and other minority elements after the  
CO2 and the H2O are gone.

This is elementary chemical engineering, folks, and can be understood by  
anyone who takes the trouble to memorize the periodic table.