Plasma Plants Vaporize Trash While Creating Energy 618
Jason Sahler writes "Recently St. Lucie County in Florida announced that it has teamed up with Geoplasma to develop the United States' first plasma gasification plant. The plant will use super-hot 10,000 degree Fahrenheit plasma to effectively vaporize 1,500 tons of trash each day, which in turn spins turbines to generate 60MW of electricity — enough to power 50,000 homes!"
Slow down... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Slow down... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Environmental impact? (Score:5, Funny)
Recently? (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, they recently announced that... Just a few couple after the first slashdot story, where they announced it:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/06/09/10/0026243.shtml [slashdot.org]
The Doc is Back! (Score:5, Funny)
No longer will I need Plutonium to generate the 3.3 Jigawatts nessecary to power my Flux Capacitor.
Reading and visualizing (Score:5, Funny)
Still asleep here, so my visualizing of this was:
"Plasma " ok that's the hot stuff
" plants " O, the beautiful trees, the nature... hmm, wait a second. Plasma trees? plasma grass?! What the...
" Vaporize trash " Dear freaking gawd! trash vaposizing red hot trees?!? Scorching grassy plains to vaporise trash on?
" While creating energy " They are self sustaining?! It's the end of the world! We're all gonna diiie!
Re:seems a bit stingy (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sunshine (Score:3, Funny)
The man whose job it is to monitor the plasma (using 4 mechanical arms powered by an AI) could be struck by a solar flare when the machine goes out of control?
Re:No methane, but CO2? (Score:3, Funny)
Exactly! What we need to do is trap the carbon it makes and somehow dispose of it. Perhaps in some sort of landfill system.
Re:Conservation of energy (Score:5, Funny)
See, this is my problem with you people who put all your faith and belief behind "science", it just leads to pessimistic attitudes. I mean sure, I know it's unlikely that this system would be the exception to conservation of energy or any other principle of physics, but there's always a possibility that maybe, just maybe, plasma garbage vaporizing is where physics breaks down. So, if you want, I'll let you live in your miserable world where you're always right and nothing exciting ever happens. All I ask is that you just don't disturb me in my world, a world of imagination and possibilities, a world where anything can happen, a world where flying cars, jetpacks and sophisticated sex robots are just around the corner and yes, a world where garbage vaporizes can run amok, producing more energy than is put into them thereby destroying the universe. Screw your science, that's the world I want to live in.
Re:Environmental impact? (Score:4, Funny)
Oxygen is good.
Oxygen was invented by Shampoo.
Re:Environmental impact? (Score:2, Funny)
nt (Score:2, Funny)
This will be a gas...
Re:Slow down... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Conservation of energy (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Conservation of energy (Score:4, Funny)
Because they don't have open minds.
Wasn't this is a movie? (Score:4, Funny)
I seem to recall a sci-fi/action movie where the sun's energy was used to create plasma which was then used to incinerate trash and create more energy and somehow save the planet or something, but it turned out to be a huge fraud and the creator/owner/whatever business-guy of the project was going to blow it up with the heroes stranded in it before anyone caught on that the project was a huge fraud and drain on public funds... or something like that. It's 3am and I just got up to use the bathroom... what am I doing here anyway?
Re:Sunshine (Score:3, Funny)
He could get food poisoning from the cafeteria food.
Re:seems a bit stingy (Score:3, Funny)
or, whatcouldpossiblygrowwrong
I see the newspapers of tomorrow.. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:OK - I'll bite (Score:5, Funny)
I do a LOT of work on refuse disposal options, principally for the UK food industry
A back of the metaphorical fag packet calculation
Oh, you brits and your wacky words and silly sayings. As a yank, I never cease to be amused by it.
Re:Conservation of energy (Score:3, Funny)
Neo, there is no spoon.
Re:Conservation of energy (Score:5, Funny)
Re:seems a bit stingy (Score:3, Funny)
1.2 kW per household? A hair dryer eats more than this.
May I recommend turning your hair dryer off after you're done drying your hair?
Re:Conservation of energy (Score:3, Funny)
The fecal molecule forms covalent bond with nylon diaper molecule, spent radiator fluid moves 10 places toward the center of the periodic table, and as it stabilizes to form lawn clippings, theta radiation (assorted bottle caps) is emitted:
l----------l----------l----------l
l-169----l-170----l-172---|
l-Aq------l-Gr-----l-Tx------l
l-Water-l-Grass-l-Fire---l
l----------l----------l----------|
The energy produced is used to power a sterling cycle heat engine, which can produce enough power to run at least 100 model railroads. There is some question however, as to whether the Iranians should be allowed to procure weapons grade Grass.
Re:Conservation of energy (Score:5, Funny)
Screw your science, that's the world I want to live in
I am intrigued by your rant and wish to subscribe to your spam.
Re:Conservation of energy (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Pyrolysis may be more useful (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Conservation of energy (Score:2, Funny)
Or the result of the experiment is politically incorrect, like for example that video games really do increase the likelihood of violent behavior, which is more than proven
Ignoring the rest of your spew, I'd be interested in any sort of evidence you can produce to back up this statement.
Other than that, you seem to be doing a good job of "knowing everything" - why don't we just crown you king and you can sort things out from your obviously superior vantage point?
Actually pretty simple (Score:3, Funny)
Throw away the products of this process, and, now that they are "garbage", feed them back into the machine. Voila! Free energy forever.
Re:Sunshine (Score:3, Funny)
YEA! It's totally misleading because C is SO much less than K! I mean 30,000K is only 29,726.85C! That guy is such a jackass!
Re:Pyrolysis may be more useful (Score:3, Funny)
That's because feeding cows grain is terribly inefficient. They basically shit them out undigested. If you think about one of the purposes of a grain, and one of the purposes of a cow, you'll see why...
Re:Conservation of energy (Score:2, Funny)
...effectively neutralizing virtually every known toxin and hazardous substance, the only exception is radioactive elements...
Are you implying that there are no non-radioactive elements which are hazardous? Let me introduce you to my friend, the periodic table...
Re:Pyrolysis may be more useful (Score:3, Funny)
the fact still remains that that land must be used to grow grain to feed the cattle.
Look buddy, I don't know what country you live in, but in MY AMERICA, we feed our livestock nothing but CORN. You don't get massive government subsidies for growing grain, you get that for growing corn.
Um, corn's a grain.
Re:Conservation of energy (Score:4, Funny)
Jetpacks [wikipedia.org] and sex robots [sybian.com] already exist. It's simply that a jetpack makes it really easy to kill yourself in a spectacular fashion, and sex robots have as much to do with their fictional counterparts as welding robots used in factories do.
I'd give 20 years, tops, before we have scifi-like sexbots. Since they'll likely come from Japan, they'll be shaped like six-year old girls with tentacles. Whether this is a plus or minus depends on your tastes, I suppose ;).
Re:Pyrolysis may be more useful (Score:4, Funny)
Put another way, vegetables are what food eats. :-)
Re:Pyrolysis may be more useful (Score:2, Funny)
The reality is that we don't have enough planet for everyone to be a meat-eater, at least not in the American sense.
Technically, we do have enough planet for sufficient meat production if we were to switch to soylent green. This would also free up graveyard space for more crop fields.