tomgottelier - 7-4-2009 at 01:28
I am working on a Project with DELA the dutch funeral home, looking into death in the future. The Research Project is Set in Aldous Huxley’s Brave
New World.
We are looking at what extremes society could go to in terms how they handle death in the future.
Can Anyone let me know anymore about the feasibility of extracting Sulphur, Phosphorus and carbon from a dead animal?
tomgottelier@gmail.com
[Edited on 7-4-2009 by tomgottelier]
PHILOU Zrealone - 7-4-2009 at 05:20
Burn everything with excess O2 to first get CO2 (or as CO3(2-)), SO2/SO3 (or as SO4(2-) and P2O5 (or PO4(3-) ) 
Now reduction of those from the mix to elementals is another long story...
Isolation of CO2 as a gas is easy by acidification.
chief - 7-4-2009 at 05:37
Phosphorus is done since ages, from the bones. Also much phosphorus comes from the fossile excrements of birds, guano, today geologically as apatite.
Besides: Where do the elements come from, before they end up in the body ? : From the fields. You couldn't get more of these out of all the bodies of
humanity than were taken from the fields before.
And the fields, compared to mining, are a poor source and will be.
[Edited on 7-4-2009 by chief]
not_important - 7-4-2009 at 06:23
Mix with the proper ratio of high carbohydrate materials - waste paper, garbage - grind them up good, plop into anaerobic fermenters to remove +9/10
of the carbon as CH4 & CO2 and use selective membranes to separate those, pass the exit suspension and CO2 into algae farms to capture the
nitrogen, phosphorous, sulfur, calcium, magnesium, and potassium, in the agae, collect, dewater, and dry for use as fertiliser.
bquirky - 7-4-2009 at 07:31
or.. you chould put the dead dude in the ground for fertilizer
Paddywhacker - 9-4-2009 at 01:27
Turn the corpse into a cloud of plasms with a terrawatt laser and feed that through a big mass spec to separate out all of the elements. Why not
separate out all of the isotopes while you are at it. The resulting isotopically pure chemical elements will be worth way more than your stiff,
before it died.
JohnWW - 9-4-2009 at 18:01
There is a big thread going on http://www.roguesci.org/theforum about "how to dispose of a dead body". It has many further suggestions.
shannon dove - 19-7-2012 at 08:20
Put the dead animal in a closed container with an air space, put some iron oxide. (Moist) in the space above. As the animal decays it will release.
Hydrogen sulphide, that will react with iron oxide to make iron sulphide, then use any known method of getting sulphur from iron sulphide. Landfill
gas can have as much as 1 % hydrogen sulphide.