Welcome to 3D CAD Design Updates. The world of computer aided design is changing all the time. Subscribing will get you every interesting story and event as it happens. If you to subscribe to my RSS Feed click on the Orange button. Lets get into whats happening below...
The Chinese city of Chongqing has completely eliminated its landfill operations and relies entirely from a brand new incineration and energy from waste plant.
This decision was born out of years of advance planning as the city doubled in size, local government found that there a practical limits to how big a landfill operation can get. In the end an incinerator is better because it actually gets rid of the waste as opposed to continually stockpiling it for years on end with the volume of waste increasing every year.
Continue reading "Incinerator completely eliminates landfill"
The builder of Malta's waste to energy incinerator has filed a complaint about a local politician for exaggerating the environmental impact the incinerator is having on the community.
Continue reading "Malta politician spreads misinformation to stop incinerator"
Last month, the operators of Montgomery County’s incinerator in Dickerson, Maryland, reported to the state Department of the Environment that there were elevated levels of pollutants being released from one of the boilers at the facility.
Continue reading "Dickerson Maryland Incinerator gets caught with high emmisions"
Theres a big difference between modular housing built on a steel frame in a factory and manufactured homes built on a steel framed trailer with wheels.
That difference is modular homes have to follow the latest US state building codes just like any other conventional stick built in a subdivision.
Manufactured homes are lumped in with RV standards which have not been updated since 1976.
Aberdeens state of the art energy from waste facility has been closed down for the second time in 6 months. The French multinational company Suez will also be taking over operations.
The NESS Incinerator has had its management changed 3 times in its short history and lawsuits are starting to fly from the original operators, who believe there was no reason to end their management contract
https://news.stv.tv/north/aberdeen-incinerator-closes-for-second-time-in-six-months
Continue reading "Aberdeen Scotland NESS energy from waste incinerator"
In the State of South Carolina, USA educators are crying out for sufficient school classroom space all over the state.
This problem is particularly acute in rural parts of South Carolina where there are seldom suitable buildings that can be renovated into school facilities.
This pretty much guarantees that there will a forever demand for portable classrooms because that is the most economical choice given the state of funding for new facilities.
Continue reading "Portable classrooms forever in South Carolina"
In 2023 a fire shut down the Miami Dade Incinerator which had been operating for 40 years. Plans were made for a replacement located in Doral, Florida but that ran into some difficulties.
Doral is right next to a golf course owned by Eric Trump who is US President Donald Trumps son. Apparently the Trumps are not in my back yard crazy about golfing next to an incinerator and vowed to raise legal hell if the incinerator was built in Doral.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjBQJvQZ9wU
https://www.local10.com/news/local/2025/12/16/fpl-spanish-company-pitch-dueling-incinerator-proposals-to-miami-dade-commissioners/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy-W7VqABhc
Continue reading "Incinerator Timeline - Miami Dade - Florida, USA"
The Liangsheng company in China has a custom built shipping container that uses pullouts just like a big recreational vehicle. These pullouts make the original 40 foot container three times as wide.
The entire clever design includes pullout walls with windows and doors and ceilings and floors.
Continue reading "Shipping container with pullouts becomes a house"
An improperly designed incineration system, basically open pit burning is suspected of causing deaths of villagers living close to the burn site in Phuket Thailand.
But landfills can be just as dangerous particularly old landfills. Where buried garbage has been forgotten and new housing developments are build right over top of toxic chemicals and waste.
Continue reading "Incineration vs Landfill both can be unhealthy"
USA made diesel trucks, cars and even tugboats depend on a rare earth metal called Cerium. It's the main ingredient in diesel particulate filters or dpf's which clean cancer causing particulates out of diesel exhaust.
Cerium is also vital to the USA steel industries for making alloy steels and the glass industry for polishing glass as well as a hundred others uses.
The rare earth is almost exclusively mined in China making the USA and the rest of the world dependant on China to assure there are no disruptions in production. That dependancy also lets China charge any price they see fit fore the metal.
Back in 1984, A Union Carbide fertilizer manufacturing plant released toxic gas into the air around the Indian city of Bhopal. More than 5000 people died. It remains the worlds worst industrial and environmental disaster.
After the closure of the factory, all of the manufacturing plant was incinerated in an effort to erase every trace of it's existence. The ash from that incineration was stockpiled in a building, untouched, incredibly, until now.
A huge controversy has erupted, not surprisingly, about where to bury this ash. 40 Years later no one in India wants this material buried anywhere near them. Despite the governments efforts to assure citizens that there is no more toxic elements left in this ash.
It's going to take a disposal method nothing short of treating it like nuclear waste to even begin to put peoples fears to rest.
More background articles here:https://www.ndtvprofit.com/amp/nation/900-tonnes-of-toxic-ash-post-incineration-of-union-carbide-waste-causes-unease-in-mp-town
Continue reading "Is this the worst toxic ash on the planet ?"
A stubborn fire in Toronto, Canada at 11 Thorncliffe Park Drive and 21 Overlea Blvd has caused the evacuation of 400 condo units. While thankfully everybody is safe, the nature of the fire is proving hard to put out with Toronto fire pouring water in between walls to control hot spots they can only see with infrared cameras.
It's taking a while to get the fire totally under control but after the fire department has finished, the Insurance companies will bring in restoration contractors with hundreds of fans, industrial size dehumidifiers and extractors. The difficult task will then become getting all the water out from between the wall as quickly as possible.
It's going to be tough with the dampness being in between wall cavities because walls will have to be broken down to get access for fans and airflow. Hopefully because it's a condo it's mostly concrete and steel construction but if there's any wet drywall, insulation and wood framing, all of that will have to be torn out and replaced.
Although steel framing may not be a problem for mould formation you do no want moisture remaining that would promote rust at the location of any structural fasteners, joints and rebar.
As the fire chief said, this fire is a unique situation and it will certainly prove to be one when it comes to restoration.
As of Dec 13/2025 Toronto Fire reported that they will estimate spending another week fighting the fire. They also released some more information about how the bituminous infused wafer board that is burning is sandwiched in a gap no bigger than 25-50mm between the two buildings.
https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/no-end-in-sight-thorncliffe-park-fire-evacuation
Finally on Dec 16/25 the fire was declared officially out. Fire chief Jessop talks about how they used every technique in their disposal to stop the fibreboard in the expansion joint to stop smouldering. Many condo units have had walls cut out in order that infrared cameras and extinguishers could get into the expansion joint area.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km9xNnRrU1I
Continue reading "Toronto fire may be restoration nightmare"
The primary benefit of incinerating waste is that it gets rid of 90 percent of municipal waste once & forever as opposed to landfills which keep accumulating waste for all time.
What to do with the 10% bottom ash left over is a question that is being answered by Panda, a waste management company in Knockharley Ireland. Panda is building a bottom ash processing facility that will remove any toxic metals from the ash and allow the remaining ash to be used for road construction and other civil infrastructure building projects.
This is a big change because formerly all bottom ash was shipped out of the country because it could not be landfilled. The laws surrounding ash exclusion from landfills are somewhat ironic considering that they accept 100% of municipal waste with the toxic metals still there completely unprocessed.
Continue reading "Using Incinerator bottom ash for construction"
A small hospital in South Okanagon, B.C., Canada has come up with an interesting perk to keep emergency doctors on site and the emergency room open. The hospital is building 2 bedroom modular homes for the doctors to use. The hospital hopes these homes will encourage the doctors to remain in the community and prevent the hospital from repeated closures caused because medical staff are just not available.
A shipping container makes a great portable office, gate house or guard house. They can be insulated and air conditioned and provide any amenities necessary. The big advantage is their portability.
Another advantage of Container offices is their designed in modularity. If you want to stack two shipping container offices on top of each other, or even three or four they are already designed to be structurally sound. All that is required is first to verify the existing foundation to make sure it can support these loads and Second, to create a proper stair tower for accessibility.
Repurposing refrigerated shipping containers is particularly helpful for outdoor offices because reefer container are already fully weather sealed, only the interior climate control systems need to be modified and windows added so that they are comfortable to work in regardless of exterior weather. In the case of an application like a multi storey freezer facility, no modifications will even be necessary.
It is also important to note that wood frame construction used in conventional modular buildings is often done to keep costs low and energy efficiency often suffers because of that. Refrigerated containers, about as tightly sealed and insulated as you can get so save money on energy right out of the box, so to speak!
https://parametric-architecture.com/the-case-for-using-containers-as-portable-office-buildings/
There is no shortage of container handling trucks that can be used to haul them wherever they need to be. But to keep shipping costs at a minimum, you need to buy locally. In Oakville Ontario, Canada, I work with Fab-Con Fabricated Container systems https://fab-con.ca/ for shipping container offices.
Troy Lake is an experienced diesel mechanic who has been demonized by the Environmental Protection Association. The EPA says you cant disable power robbing failure prone anti pollution equipment on diesel engines without stiff fines and prison time.
But what if EPA rules make it impossible for the trucking sector to earn an honest living ? It is not logical to sacrifice highly productive segments of the economy. If you are going to go electric Why not heavily subsidize electric trucks so there is no longer an incentive to drive diesel ? Why on earth is no one pursuing a compromise such as using diesel electric hybrid powerplants such as those in locomotives and ships ?
Cities world wide tout the success of using diesel exhaust emissions controls like the dpf systems mechanic Troy Lake disables. The Cities show the results of lowering fine particulate diesel emissions over years of regulations.
https://e.vnexpress.net/news/news/traffic/from-beijing-to-london-cities-show-what-happen-when-they-crack-down-on-polluting-vehicles-4990254.html
Continue reading "Diesel or Electric trucks, whats it going to be ?"
In this interview with Dr James Tour, the subject of flash joule heating is discussed which has the potential to extract rare earth minerals out of materials such as incinerator fly ash.
Continue reading "Flash Joule Heating could be answer to extracting minerals out of fly ash"
I have seen this do it yourself healthy air scrubber many times now and it's not a bad idea. Air Scrubbers are simple devices, basically a filter and a fan in an enclosed box.
But there are some important details. It's all about the filter. The ones he is using are not capable of filtering out invisible particles that go through most face masks and straight into your lungs. You need MERV 13 filters at a bare minimum for that. Commercial scrubbers use expensive HEPA air filters.
Then there is the fan, it is not capable of overcoming the resistance of a good filter. That's why real scrubbers have much smaller fans with giant motors on them.
It would be great to do particulate testing on one of these homemade scrubbers to find out just how good it actually is and then optimize it with slightly better filters
This article does a great job of laying out the pro's and con's of municipal waste incineration versus landfills.
About the only thing that I can think of that it does not cover is the in the long term benefits of an incinerator. Once garbage is burned in an incinerator it is gone. Whereas in a landfill the waste just keeps building up over time making problems with leachate and off gassing progressively worse. The landfill never stops growing it merely relocates to another deep hole so that you have two landfills.
off gassing in landfills is particularily problematic because methane is a much more hazardous gas to the environment than simple carbon dioxide which is a fundamental building block of life.
China is running out of waste to burn, which is a good thing ! For one they have found a way to get rid of landfills, to the extent they are digging up old ones to provide fuel for waste to energy plants.
Secondly they have discovered there is a limit to how many waste to energy plants need to be built based on available municipal waste stocks. That's actually better for the environment because there is no need for stockpiling garbage for decades with its associated leaching and off gassing into the soil and air.
Municipal incinerators are clearly an efficient method of permanent waste disposal. There is no need for an unlimited number of incinerators they just need to be matched to the quantity of available waste.
https://en.as.com/latest_news/trash-in-high-demand-how-china-is-trying-to-solve-its-garbage-shortage-problem-f202511-n/#tooltip-google
This Eco-Business article delves into the Chinese incineration over capacity situation in much more detail. It still does not discuss the changing nature of incinerator feedstocks and the impact it has on continued operation.
https://www.eco-business.com/news/whats-behind-chinas-waste-incineration-overcapacity/
Here is another article that goes into how China has decided to import municipal waste from western countries again. China originally did this 10 years ago because it was possible for to items like waste cardboard that could be recycled and resold. China stopped importing waste back then because there was just too much unusable material.
Now that Chinese cities are using up municipal waste stocks they need more from overseas to prepare the correct garbage recipes to efficiently keep their incinerators creating power from heat.
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3335298/waste-wealth-why-china-building-incinerators-around-world