Do you know what the cremation process looks like, although it has been simplified, there are still as many as eight steps?
The first step is to prepare and arrange the work, and the family needs to contact the funeral home and crematorium to agree on a specific date and what the funeral service will be.
In this step, the family can customize the coffin according to their needs. These coffins are generally made of flammable materials, and some crematoriums also offer coffins made of paper or other biodegradable materials.
After confirmation, the second step is to prepare the body of the deceased. At this time, according to the request of the family, the staff will wash the body of the deceased, and according to the content of the will, change him into his favorite clothes during his lifetime. At the same time, the deceased's body should be carefully inspected for metalwork to prevent melting and sticking to the crematorium during the incineration process. Some special materials may even be produced during incineration**, so this step is essential.
Depending on the region and the grade of the cremator, the staff may also make a cut on the body of the body to ensure that the gas in the abdomen does not expand in the high temperature environment and cause **.
When everything is ready, the third step is to preheat the crematorium, which is to improve the incineration efficiency and ensure that the body can be completely burned as soon as possible when the temperature rises to the incineration stage. In addition, it minimizes the harmful gases and residues generated during incineration.
When the internal temperature of the cremator reaches about 1000 degrees Fahrenheit, the fourth step is coming, and it is also the most important part of the entire cremation process.
The remains will be propelled along with the coffin into the crematorium, which is preheated up to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Therefore, most of this step is fully automatic by machine, and some crematoriums will use semi-automatic solutions. Either way, it is important to ensure that the body is stable enough throughout the process and that there is no risk of injury to the staff.
Once the coffin is inside, the rest of the work is handed over to the operating system, which brings us to the fifth and sixth steps of the cremation process, which are high-temperature incineration and full monitoring, respectively.
The crematorium is equipped with a viewing opening and a monitoring system, and the staff will operate the system to enter the high-temperature incineration stage, at which time the temperature of the furnace will rise sharply, reaching a high of 1800 degrees Fahrenheit (about 982 degrees Celsius). At this temperature, the body will also be completely burned in a short period of time, and the organic matter inside the body will quickly decompose and vaporize under the high temperature, and finally only the ashes composed of inorganic matter and minerals will be left.
The entire process is monitored by a staff member who keeps an eye on the data fed back by the sensors and makes adjustments to ensure that the remains can be completely incinerated. And when the incineration is over, he checks the situation through the observation window. Once the process has been successfully completed, the seventh step begins, which involves the cooling of the furnace chamber and the collection of the ashes.
The purpose of the cooling is to ensure the safety of the staff to ensure that there are no unnecessary risks during storage and cleaning.
When the crematorium has cooled down, it is opened, and the inside of the furnace is in shambles. The bones are also relatively complete, and in order to fit them into storage, the staff will use something called a bone crusher to crush the bones into a fine powder.
In some crematoriums where the equipment is not advanced enough, this step can only be done with a hammer. But not all bones need to be crushed, and the staff will dispose of them according to the family's request. But the space of the urn is limited after all, and it is impossible to put all the ashes in it.
And those ashes that the family members don't want will eventually be disposed of in the crematorium. In most cases, the ashes are buried in one place, but in some special cases, the crematorium may hand them over to a building material processor and finally be made into a less polluting building material.
There are even specialized processors who can make the ashes into wearable ornaments or sculptures. Although on the face of it, the plan must be agreed by the family, but there are still many doubts that no one can be 100% sure where the excess ashes will go.
Therefore, in order to prevent their loved ones from being taken away to build a house or made into diamonds to wear on their hands, most people choose to break up the remains and fill the urn as much as possible.
At this point, the first seven steps of cremation are completed, and the last step is to hand over the ashes to the family. According to the will of the deceased, they may be thrown into the sea or lifted into the mountains. But most people will still place the urn at home, the relatives are no longer there, and the contents of this box are the only thoughts of future generations about him, and it is also the name that has been whispered softly countless times in his sleep.