Now here's a system I can get behind: turning trash into energy via the magic of plasma. Yep, it kills two birds with one stone, and it's coming soon. The first plasma plant in the country is being planned for St. Lucie County in Florida, where it'll use 10,000 degree plasma to vaporize 1,500 tons of trash every day. The vapor will then spin turbines to create enough juice to power a whopping 50,000 homes. Holy crap, how sweet is this?
Plasma Gasification plants also generate less emissions than standard incineration plants, which is also good. The only X factor that could make this a bit less exciting is the cost to run it all, which may be pretty high. We'll have to see how this setup works in the real world once our friends down in Florida have got theirs up and running.
Popular Science, via Inhabitat
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By fuzzywigg at 2:07 PM ON 11/12/08
The article is almost right. The St. Lucie plant is NOT the first in the country. A company called IET (http://www.inentec.com/) has a PEM system that is almost 100% efficient and sustainable.
Their system has been deployed around the word and has one running in Richland, Washington. The company is also planning two more systems. One for the the production of Ethanol byproduct from consumer waste and the other for Dow Corning to dispose of chemical waste.
By CoolProducts at 2:26 PM ON 11/12/08
Sounds like another interesting idea. My only questions are, is 1500 tons of trash a day really all that much? I'm assuming we generate much more than that in a day. I guess if there were a lot of these plants they could maybe make a dent in the landfills.
Also. What exactly is plasma, and is the benefit of saving costs by destroying landfill trash and the energy used to power the homes enough to offset the high costs?
By Dalhimar at 7:30 PM ON 11/12/08
@Cool
Well to answer your question, in higher income families, people can throw away up to 5lbs of trash a day. Using this we can say 1500*2000 to get LBS. This is going to be around 3,000,000lbs. Now devide this by 5 to get 600,000.
So this can burn the trash for around 600,000 people per day. That is on the city scale of trash production.(Indianapolis City has around 781870 people)
Now for the plasma, Plasma is a special sort elemental state. In terms of energy, it goes solid>liquid>gas>plasma
Now the unique thing about plasmas is that they can be self sustaining. The only problem is containment, most plasmas need a magnetic field or some type of radiation(radio waves) to stay coherent, or in one spot. Since it is self sustaining, all you need to do is keep the plasma in one spot and it can break down just about anything you would be able to put into it.
In otherwords its like a fire so hot, it burns the smoke along with the wood. This means it is extreamly clean and efficient. The waste smoke or material is usually broken down to its most basic element or its strongest bond in a compound, most of which are considered "Clean".
Think of this, Lightning the only reason we see it is because the electricity energizes the air to the point of instantly becoming a plasma. This causes it to expand extreamly fast, leaving a void which the surrounding air then crashes down to cause the thunder.
Also, the sun, just try to get anything near it and the plasma will incinerate it.
By Elisabeth at 12:11 PM ON 11/13/08
The PlascoEnergy Group has had highly efficient Plasma Gasification plants in the US longer than I have been alive.
By Mike at 12:12 PM ON 11/13/08
So...how much power is actually used to initiate the plasma...how much power is used to keep in place (containment)...and can it be made small enough to power a vehicle (Mr. Fusion) :D
By Elisabeth at 12:31 PM ON 11/13/08
As to cars, not directly - however, it does create plenty of cheap electricity, so plug-in hybrids are in luck. For more of the particulars, check out www.plascoenergygroup.com/ !
By Elisabeth at 12:48 PM ON 11/13/08
From every tonne of waste converted, Plasco recovers: 1.2 MWh of Electricity, 300 L of Drinking Water, 5-10 kg Commercial Salt, 150 kg of Construction Aggregate, and 5 kg of Sulper Agricultural Fertilizer - showing this to be a very sensible and profitible way to free us from our dependance from foreign oil, and clean up our planet at the same time. Plasma Gasification, Solar, Wind, and Natural Gas are America's future. See more at www.plascoenergygroup.com/?Technology_Overview You'll notice that the first step of the process is to Salvage and Recycle whatever possible.
By MJC at 3:25 PM ON 11/13/08
This 1500 tpd plant is all a load of manure from a wild-eyed developer.
It has been downsized recently and we have been waiting two years since the original USAtoday article announcement.
There are NO plants in the USA as of today generating power using this technology
http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=211955&page=1
By MJC at 7:41 PM ON 12/03/08
The city of Sacramento is backing out of thier plans for a plasma trash-to-energy plant also sold to them by the GEOPLASMA people.
It seems that the lawyers (and others) smell a problem when there are no details (only grand plans)supplied by the developers...
http://www.sacbee.com/378/story/1403368.html
No one has built a large demonstration plant (>100MWe) in the world to date.
I am sick and tired of art-history majors and theater people expressing thier "feelings" and "personal opinions" about generation of electricity using trash.....
The PLASMA process is not economic or practical
Dream on.....
-MJC