I recently made an unexpected detour to Taiwan to attend my grandma’s funeral.  After the funeral service, we accompanied her body to the on-site crematorium where her body and coffin were smoothly inserted into the gaping maw of a huge, glowing-red natural gas fired oven.

During the 45 minutes or so that it took to reduce Grandma to a pile of bleached bones and powder, I hung out in the cafe on the second floor of the crematorium, where, through my tear-blurred eyes, I spotted this sign:

"Showing the Earth a little Love: Transforming Cremation Heat into Air Conditioning"

Those clever Taiwanese crematorium designers have put together a system that enabled Grandma to give us one final gift – the gift of cool air on a hot day.

At the center of the bottom part of the diagram is the cremation oven.  Hot smoke goes up to the heat exchanger on the upper right, and heated water is transferred to the absorption chiller on the bottom left.  The absorption chiller uses heat to produce cold water, which is then used to create cold air.

Here’s a picture of the air blower in the upstairs cafe:

Up until that day, I thought that I would prefer to be buried in an unmarked hole in the ground in a forest or field somewhere so that my remains could return to nature in the most energy-efficient manner possible.  Alternatively, I wouldn’t mind being eaten by vultures, hyenas, sharks, or other scavengers/carnivores.  With energy-efficient cremation methods like this, however, I may be more open to being cremated.  Kudos to Taiwan for this excellent cremation/cooling system!