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Comment by jdauriemma | Hacker News Reader

I wonder what waste products the enzyme produces? Apologies if this is a nonsensical question, I don't know much about biology.

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depends, but it's probably ultimately broken down into CO2. Halogens become salt, due to dehalogenase.

edit: dehalogenase, not halogenase

> broken down into CO2

Might as well burn them in district heaters then? Provided you catalyze/capture the non-CO2 compounds as well as possible.

burning is less precise and will have indeterminate byproducts - soot - (dioxins e.g.), because it's a fast process.

Plasma converting/gasification doesn't have the "fast process" problem. (Of course it has its own challenges to solve.)

I'm a layperson, but, 'clean' CO2 sounds preferable over those byproducts. At least CO2 is captured and sequestered by plants.

You can burn co2 also.

Sorry, no. Carbon dioxide will not react further with oxygen no matter how hot you get it. In other words, it will not burn.

sorry, I was confused by the dirty byproduct carbon monoxide (CO), which is a dirty gas you get from burning plastics, which can be burned into carbon dioxide (CO2) - which is considered harmless except that it's a greenhouse gas.

Thank you for explaining!

Dioxins are intermediaries in the process of current wood and coal-burning plants. But they eventually get burned as well.

> The gas-phase dioxins can be substantially destroyed using catalysts, some of which can be present as part of the fabric filter bag structure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incineration#Dioxin_cracking_i...

Proper trash incineration will not produce complex molecules. It does require an actual plant designed for that instead of a pit in the ground, though.

Do the actual microbes emit CO2 or is some of that carbon used in replication? As awesome as it sounds that plastic will be biodegradable, I'm sure there's a lot of plastics are used in critical places with the assumption they won't degrade in nature. If microbes/enzymes do release a lot of CO2 in this process, are we destroying the atmosphere for the sake of the landfill? Does anyone know how many tons of CO2 are trapped in plastics?

> Do the actual microbes emit CO2 or is some of that carbon used in replication

Yes

Bacteria can (and do) also produce methane, which is even worse greenhouse gas.

From a quick view the bacteria eats all the products of the enzyme

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