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!"
Re:So.. (Score:5, Informative)
How much energy is used in generating that 10,000 degree plasma, hmm? Less than what it'll output by incinerating trash? I'd like to see that.
It's apparently self sustaining [tech-faq.com].
Re:Sunshine (Score:5, Informative)
What could possibly go wrong? I dunno, lots of things. The whole place could catch on fire. Or someone could be electrocuted by equipment on site. Or someone has an accident on a ladder and falls and hurts himself. Or gets in a car crash on the way to work. (That's probably the most dangerous risk right there!)
What, you wanted something exotic? 5,600 degrees C is weak. A lightning bolt can hit 30,000 Kelvin. Somehow the Earth escapes destruction though!
Plasma Waste Disposal (Score:2, Informative)
plasmawastedisposal.com [plasmawastedisposal.com]
Vaporware technology (Score:5, Informative)
Their web site [geoplasma.com] just screams "vaporware". In fact, the useful-scale project has been cancelled [tcpalm.com], and only a small "demonstration plant" will be built.
The real questions about this are 1) do they really get out more energy than they put in, and 2) how much processing of the exhaust gases is required? Westinghoue Plasma Corporation [westinghouse-plasma.com] (which, sadly, has little to do with Westinghouse) claims that 1000 tonnes (metric?) of solid waste produces the energy equivalent of 1 (one) barrel of oil. So this isn't a big energy producer. Ordinary waste-to-energy plants do better than that, but don't burn as clean as a plasma arc.
The other problem is what comes out. Organic compounds are literally blasted apart into atoms at those temperatures, so it deals with biowaste just fine. CO2 comes out, of course. NOx, maybe. Everything heavier (metals, etc.) is supposed to come out as a "molten slag" suitable for cement aggregate. Not sure what the cement industry thinks of this. They're usually quite picky about what's allowed in cement aggregate [cement.org]. Some contaminants interfere with the chemistry of concrete curing and make bad concrete. It might be good for filling in swamps and such.
as long as the bleading hearts don't do the same (Score:3, Informative)
A high temperature incinerator was proposed for Victoria, Australia. The "who will think of the children" shot it down and we still have landfill. Here is a link: http://homepage.mac.com/herinst/sbeder/incinerator2.html [mac.com]
also google for "high temperature incinerator" +victoria
Re:"While Creating Energy" (Score:3, Informative)
Re:So.. (Score:5, Informative)
It is self sustaining in the way your car's electrical system is: It provides enough juice to start the engine, which recharges your battery and runs your radio/lights/cigarette lighter.
Technically true... (Score:5, Informative)
supertoxins? (Score:1, Informative)
There is a reasoned and informative opposition [floridalcv.org] to this plant. By ignoring this opposition, the featured article reads like a PR piece.
Re:Conservation of energy (Score:3, Informative)
This process will NOT "create" energy.
seriously. at best this sounds like a marginally novel take on cogeneration [wikipedia.org].
Re:supertoxins? (Score:5, Informative)
You are right, and I think that's one of the reasons they are proposing plasma (look it up... [wikipedia.org]). In that state of matter, all molecules break up, including dioxin and other poisonous compounds. However, what happens when you cool down the exhaust gases will depend a lot on the construction, so you might still get dioxin (or something worse than that); I suppose this is fairly implementation-dependent. Also, I am not so sure about what happens to particulate: does the cooling process create more of it, or does the plasma state break it down?
Pyrolysis may be more useful (Score:5, Informative)
One of the problems we are going to face Real Soon, is "Peak Oil". Another is funnily enough "Peak Soil"[1] and yet another is too much CO2 in the atmosphere.
A plasma turns everything into the basic element and from there to the lowest energy state, so yeah we get plenty of energy out, but it doesn't help so much with peak oil, peak earth or too much co2 in the atmosphere.
Some of the benefits of pyrolysis however:
1: Energy is produced.
2: Liquid fuels can be produced for transport.
3: Biochar/Agrichar byproducts can be used to improve agricultural soils.
The biochar byproduct can make the process carbon negative.
[1] Degradation of agricultural soils.
OK - I'll bite (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No methane, but CO2? (Score:2, Informative)
Just release the carbon into the air, so the trees can use it. Or do we hate trees now?
Also, rotting garbage turns into methane and CO2. If you didn't know that.
Re:Environmental impact? (Score:5, Informative)
Aren't there plenty of simple molecules and elements that are toxic, not just metals?
Most elements are only toxic when part of specific molecules. They're toxic because they're highly reactive, and reaction means they're going to a lower energy state. At some point, the energy state should become low enough that they're pretty inert.
Ofcourse stuff that's toxic because of radioactivity instead of chemical properties is a different matter. But if you vaporize it and mix it with lots of inert material, you should end up with something that's about as radioactive as sea water.
We should focus on reuse and recycling, not vaporization.
Of course, but recycling isn't always practical.
Maybe this will answer some questions: (Score:1, Informative)
From http://biowaste.blogspot.com/2007/01/geoplasma-answers-trash-vaporization.html [blogspot.com]:
1. Question: How much energy does the plasma-arc use?
Answer: The plasma-arc facility uses approximately 40 megawatts of energy per hour. This is approximately one-quarter of the total output of hourly energy received from MSW.
2. Question: What will be the source of the plasma-arc energy?
Answer: The facility will receive its energy from its total output. For St. Lucie, it is expected that the 3,000 tons of MSW processed per day will create 160 megawatts of energy per hour. As stated previously, 40 megawatts will be used to power the facility and the remaining 120 megawatts will be sold to an Electric Utility.
3. Question: What does the energy source emit?
Answer: See question 5.
4. Question: Is the high heat of the plasma-arc being captured and utilized?
Answer: Because of the nature of a closed-loop system the heat will be captured and utilized both in the plasma gasification process and later in the production of steam.
5. Question: How are they going to combust the syngas to keep the emissions low?
Answer: There is no combustion during the gasification process. The Plasma-arc gasification process is a chemical reduction process that converts MSW from its original state to a glass-like aggregate solid at the bottom, and a synthetic fuel gas, also known as syngas, at the top.
Once gasification is over, the syngas is cleaned in a multi-step process, bringing it to levels near natural gas cleanliness. It is then compressed before being used as fuel for a gas turbine.
The gas turbine for this process is a modified natural gas turbine that mixes the cleaned syngas with air from the atmosphere, combusts the mixture and sends the hot gases through a turbine. The turbine spins an electric generator to produce electricity. The discharged hot gases are then passed through a heat recovery steam generator to produce more steam and to cool the hot gases. The cooler exhaust gases are then discharged into the atmosphere via a stack.
Emissions from this process are very similar to natural gas combined cycle plants which are considered to be 'clean' and are located and permitted all over the U.S., and for that matter the whole world.
Re:Environmental impact? (Score:5, Informative)
1. Garbage contains a lot of energy (hydrocarbons in plastics, rubber, food, paper, etc).
2. Garbage contains some metals (aluminum, iron, copper, zinc, nickle, etc).
3. Garbage contains a far amount of inert material (earth, ceramics, etc).
So, you run everything through a big grinder, feed the dust to an electric torch which turns it into plasma, which of course breaks all those fancy compounds down into simpler elements:
1. Hydrocarbon gas - synthgas (methane like stuff).
2. Steam -- the water trapped in plant materials mostly (grass clippings, banana peals, stuff like that).
3. Metallic gas - which you can optionally separate by element if you have the right equipment.
4. Slag - inert silica mostly, mixed with other crud (which you can use as building materials).
Important thing to remember is the electric torch doesn't burn the garbage -- burning is inefficient and pointless. You want to separate all the various elements so you can make efficient use of them:
1. The hydrocarbons are pull off as synthgas, which you use some of to run a generator to power the torch and the surplus you sell to a conventional natural gas power planet for profit!
2. The steam which you separate and sell to as heat for commercial or residential use.
3. The metals you sell as scrap -- either high or low quality depending on your ability to separate the elements from the plasma.
4. The silica slag you can mold into pavers while it's still hot, or spin into a ceramic like wool as insulation, or into black pebbles as ground cover or whatnot.
The process has a number of advantages:
1. It is profitable -- it produces more energy than it consumes.
2. It's low tech -- you can set up the facility inside the garbage dump and avoid shipping the garbage around.
3. It sterile -- it consumes medical waste, contaminated material, toxic junk as readily as normal waste and it reduces it all to simple lemony fresh clean compounds (makes the birds sing). You can't feed it radioactive material obviously, as that would foul up the works.
4. It's happy -- converts garbage back into useful things.
Biggest obstacle has been the patents on the process which expired a year or two ago. Rejoice, garbage is the new valuable resource!
Re:Nice job. (Score:3, Informative)
Plasco has had a Plasma gasification pilot that has been running for a while here in Ottawa. I seem to recall over the summer news was that it produced less energy than hoped, but was still self supporting.
Links:
http://www.plascoenergygroup.com/ [plascoenergygroup.com]
Re:Environmental impact? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, they seperate the bad stuff out. From TFA:
The intense heat of the plasma gasifies municipal waste, converting it into "syngas", which is then cleaned to remove volatile elements.
This process is not new -- it's been done elsewhere (Japan, Canada, UK) before. It works. They know what they're doing.
Re:Pyrolysis may be more useful (Score:4, Informative)
There's never going to be as many calories in a cow as in the food that it's eaten over its lifespan - it has to use a lot of calories on things like movement, or body heat, and it isn't getting 100% of the energy out of its food in the first place.
Putting the "cow" link in the food-chain between "grain" and "human" means we lose a lot of energy from the grain... if memory serves, each layer on a food-chain is about 10% of the one below, so running plants through a cow (or any other animal) to make meat isn't an efficient process by any stretch of the imagination.
Sure is a delicious process though.
Site vaporized by plasma (mirror here) (Score:2, Informative)
Your post (Score:2, Informative)
[ ] physical [ ] legislative [ ] market-based [ ] chemical
approach to waste management. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws
[x] it violates the First Law of Thermodynamics
[ ] it violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics
[x] catalysts are NOT magic
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
[x] the energy needed to accomplish your simple tranformation
[x] it requires more non-renewable energy inputs than the renewable energy produced by it.
[ ] It requires immediate cooperation from the entire world all at once.
[ ] People will cheat.
[ ] It requires the population to act contrary to self-interest.
[x] Extensive existing infrastructure.
[ ] Problems storing power.
[ ] Inefficient power transport systems.
[ ] Variable weather.
[x] Rich and powerful industries and lobby groups who stand to lose money.
[ ] Politicians who know nothing about science.
[ ] It uses Nuclear power, and that scares a large number of people who don't get the science behind it.
[x] It uses science, and that scares a large number of people who don't get the science behind it.
In summary:
[ ] Nice try, but it won't actually work.
[x] You're a scammer trying to blind investers with psuedoscience.
[ ] You're completely nuts.
Re:Isn't this... bad? (Score:3, Informative)
The process doesn't break down atoms (that would be fission) it only breaks the molecular bonds. All elements would be preserved for reuse.