BIG CHILL

Dust to dust, ashes to freeze-dried powder

Rather than bury or burn bodies after death, a Swedish company has come up with a chilling alternative – freezing them in liquid nitrogen, then using soundwaves to smash the brittle remains into a powder.
Concerns about the environmental impact of cremation, where a body is incinerated at high temperature, and burial, in which a body can take many years to decompose, has led Swedish firm Promessa Organic AB to the new solution.
The process involves flash-freezing bodies to – 18C, then dipping them in liquid nitrogen with a temperature of -196C. The bodies, extracted from the super-cold solution, are brittle as glass and broken down with bursts of sound to leave a powder substance.
From there, all water is removed in a vacuum chamber before the remains are moved through a metal screen that filters away any precious metals in fillings or remnants of pacemakers and other implants that may have survived the freezing process.