a)      Atoms are the starting point of chemistry and are primarily modeled on the nano-scale.  Chemistry does not exist inside the atom.  Even though pure unadulterated nanotechnology would be the at will movement and exact placement of any desired individual atom from a physical perspective, large strides can be made by considering en-masse nano reorganization at the elemental level from a chemical perspective.  Say for example I want a roast beef sandwich with au jus to materialize in front of me.  Well, in my nano machine of course.  Then I am going to need a ready supply of all the elements in said food. 

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b)      In the case of food I’ll most likely need a bunch of organic chemistry atoms such as carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and what not.  However there are only about 80 natural non radioactive elements so why not have a ready supply of whatever you need.  Boron, lithium, chlorine, iodine, or whatever.  Well, all the elements we need already exist in abundance in the things we already have.  So an efficient question might be to ask, what is the simplest method of breaking down everything we have, organizing it to their corresponding groups, and reassembling where needed.  An 80-90% “boiling point” oven could solve the first two stages of the task; breaking down and organization.

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c)      “Boiling Point” refers to the concept of the ovens functionality.  In solid and liquid forms, matter is not usually at the individual nano atomic level but at the micro molecular level.  However, as higher and higher energy gases, most substances rapidly approach smaller molecules and continue to breakdown towards free atoms.  At a high enough temperature one reaches plasma.  80-90% of substances turn to gas above 10,000 degrees.  At these energies, a gas easily mixes to homogeneity, so we have solved step one of breaking stuff down.  Step two, sorting the stuff, is as easy as letting the oven cool slowly.  This should allow layers of like materials to sort out. 

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d)     The layers will be striated and mostly homogeneous.  The oven would be a closed oven; no gas is considered pollution – just something waiting to be reorganized.  There are 3 points worth mentioning about this idea.  One, is that this process has not been tested fully by any information I have been able to find.  We must see what settles out at different temperatures with both a natural mix (representing real landfill input), and a pure elemental mix consisting of all natural elements in abundance (so no one stoichiometric reaction equation becomes saturated).  Two, is that there will still be byproducts from this process that need further processing, however, these will be “organized” byproduct that can be easily transferred to a next process.  Furthermore, the disorganization of the system from initial product to settled stage has decreased by some large percent.  And three, until recently, I had not found anyone doing anything remotely like this, even though it is a simple idea, but have now found Startech on Feb 2005.  Startech has created a plasma oven version that currently runs at 35,000 degrees, has a diverse – but still limited input, and a product specific output of about 6 substances as best as I can tell. 

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e)      The Startech oven is a good start, but it may still be slightly too complicated.  I think a similar result could be reached at lower temps and that a different cooling process should be applied.  They cool quickly to avoid the formation of dioxins and flavins.  However, with a different process these might form differently or not at all.  A slow cool would seems interesting to me.  In either case, I don’t see these as a waste products in the long run, but rather just something else to be sorted.  For example, the dioxins if still a problem in that form would go on to stage 2 processing.  The development of these 2nd stages, and subsequent stages, would be a source of developmental growth within the field of resource management.