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!"
Environmental impact? (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of what we produce, most 'trash' is going to be hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen. So I have to wonder, is this 'burning' it, or is it going to be producing diatomic hydrogen and oxygen? Does anyone have any experience with plasma gasification that could explain why this wouldn't produce unwanted byproducts from the gaseous components cooling down?
Sunshine (Score:5, Interesting)
If ever the whatcouldpossiblygowrong tag were appropriate...
Artificial limits on power output (Score:5, Interesting)
From working with a garbage to energy plant in Virginia, they had the ability to generate much more then the 80MW (from memory) they were generating. They had to impose the limit or they would qualify as a utility under the state guidelines, and be subject to regulation. Since the plant was privately owned, and wanted run themselves, they had to let a lot of the power go as heat.
They would regulate it some by the rate at which the garbage went in, but when it starts backing up, you have no choice but to burn it.
Re:Environmental impact? (Score:5, Interesting)
You got it. Supposedly at those temperatures, no molecule complex enough to be harmful will survive.
Of course, that doesn't much help with any metals that happen to get vaporized in there with it... but everyone needs a little more zinc in their diet anyhow.
Re:Artificial limits on power output (Score:3, Interesting)
I know people think of these plants as incinerators, and in some cases they might be, but this one was some nice tech. Actually, there was no smell at all, no smoke, and very low particulate emissions.
The tech was from a German company, very high temp burn, not quite like this plasma, but very hot and controlled. It was self-sustaining once it got going, and managed to get rid of the garbage from a pretty large region. I think something like 2000 trash trucks dumped their loads there per day.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
A plant that vaporizes things? (Score:3, Interesting)
Isn't that a Slaver Sunflower?
Re:So.. (Score:5, Interesting)
exactly. it's unlikely that the initial electric charge will require more energy than is produced by the 1500 tons of garbage it burns each day (and presumably the plant stays on for more than a day at a time).
though i think a diesel engine is perhaps a better analogy since normal gas ICEs need an electrically-generated spark for each cycle, whereas a diesel engine uses compression-ignition thus only requires electricity for the initial compression stroke, after which point the engine is self-sustaining. so in this case the trash being vaporized is like the diesel fuel which is capable of sustaining the reaction on its own once the process is started.
in any case, this sounds like a great way to kill two birds with one stone. so long as the plasma plant doesn't generate any toxic waste or cause heat pollution it'd be a great way to get energy in practically any environment. now we just need to get more plug-in electrics on the road so that our transportation infrastructure can take advantage of cool sustainable technologies like this.
Re:Vaporware technology (Score:5, Interesting)
Their web site just screams "vaporware". In fact, the useful-scale project has been cancelled, and only a small "demonstration plant" will be built.
To respond to these two points.
1. This is an established technology, even though it hasn't been commercial for all that long.
2. A lot of projects are being cancelled as collateral damage from the mortgage meltown.
To respond to the rest of your post:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/plasma-converter.htm/printable [howstuffworks.com]
The big question is (Score:3, Interesting)
Does this mean that I will be paid for my garbage, rather than me paying to have it removed? If I have to pay to have my trash removed and then pay to have electricity, I'm calling foul.
Combustion vs. recycling (Score:3, Interesting)
Has anyone done the math and compared the economic value of 60MW of electricity versus the value of the equivalent trash? I suppose you should account for sorting and recycling costs on one side, and for operating costs, plant capital costs and maintenance on both. Unfortunately I have no data on this so I cannot really argue for one alternative or the other.
Re:Artificial limits on power output (Score:2, Interesting)
"they had to let a lot of the power go as heat"
What they do in Vienna (Austria, not Virginia) is transport the excess heat to homes for household heating and hot water.
There really is a lot you can do with burning trash.
Re:Vaporware technology (Score:3, Interesting)
That has to be a typo. The energy yield in a standard inceration facility is about 2MJ/kg of household waste. (which is roughly 20 times worse than petrol). The 1000 tonnes of waste should be equivalent to about 600 barrels of oil, or this process is absurdly inefficent.
Re:So.. (Score:4, Interesting)
If there's any "heat pollution" produced by the plant it simply means they need another turbine -- the thing is *supposed* to produce heat, much of which will be converted into electricity. There's no reason to believe the heat capture or heat->electricity conversion in this system would be any worse than other existing electrical plants.
As for "toxic waste", it's not any worse than existing incinerators or hybrid coal/waste systems, and it produces less harmful gases than any form of combustion. The primary gas outputs are carbon monoxide and hydrogen, neither of which is particularly harmful once diluted in the atmosphere.
Depending on what you put in there are some harmful output gases, like HCl (which can be removed with calcium oxide), but most of the heavier elements -- mercury, cadmium, lead -- are output in a liquid slag rather than as a gas.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Somethings not right. (Score:3, Interesting)
It probably has something to do with the need for everything a landfill has and maintenance for the factory on top of that. They will both need to receive trash and move it around. The landfill just piles the trash up in an orderly manner and then it's done. The factory has to run the machine to vaporize the crap and then get rid of the waste material that process creates.
The vaporizing could create energy to sell, but it might not be a good margin over the cost of just running the machine, instead of the landfill getting paid to just pile shit up with little maintenance cost.
Re:Conservation of energy (Score:5, Interesting)
I was thinking exactly the same thing - I'm still sceptical, certainly, but the Scientific American story [sciam.com] that's linked from the one above does say that "it will process 1,500 tons of garbage a day, sending 60 megawatts of electricity to the power grid (after using some to power itself).". They're definitely trying to claim that they've found a way to use random waste as a fuel source, which would be a breakthrough if true.
Using random waste as fuel source has been done already. Using random waste as a clean fuel source, now that's really a breakthrough. And if this process works the way I think it does, it should be pretty clean, no matter what you throw in.
Except for CO2 probably, which is kinda hard to prevent, and rather a big issue lately. I hope they can capture it in something safe. And if they can't, well, CO2 is still quite a lot better than dioxins.
Create energy? (Score:2, Interesting)
What they forget to say is that it will take a lot more than 60MW to create the plasma turbines. One doesn't get "free" energy. But I'm all in favor of vaporizing trash, as long as it doesn't harm the environment more than normal trash does.
Re:Slow down... (Score:5, Interesting)
I hate to be that guy on /. who can't take a joke, but... brine shrimp have a really important niche role in the food chain. This is a bit of an oversimplification, but basically without brine shrimp and things like it, there would be none of the larger tasty fish that we like so much to eat so much. This is why it drives conservationists nuts when people bitch and moan about environmental regulations aimed at protecting something which seems insignificant to the layperson. You fail to see the interconnectedness of it all.
Mod the above post up. (Score:5, Interesting)
As I remember, farm raised catfish and free-range chickens get a 1:1 corn-protein to meat-protein ratio, mainly because they also eat bugs (or in China, the catfish/shrimp eat chicken poop.)
For cows, I think the number was either 8:1 or 20:1.
So yes, the poster who suggested that this is why everyone can't be a vegetarian is wrong. But I don't put it down to math. I put it down to his spouting off without having any actual facts.
Just as an aside, I might mention that this plant will likely poison the ground around it with such things as cadmium (NiCad, NimH batteries), mercury (coin batteries, thermometers... hospitals burn these up all the time), lead, arsenic, and other heavy metals.
The real shame is that a lot of these heavy metals actually should be classified, like gold, as precious metals. Right now when we are in deflation (with a specter of possibly hyperinflation once the credit bubble has burst), those metals are one of the few things that will maintain value.
I'd think that a few chemists who sat down and found a way to properly reclaim the lithium and other metals, could make a killing by collecting and sorting the waste, and then disposing of the non-toxic waste in standard ways, while mining the waste for all it's worth. The earlier you sort it, the higher your profits will be. Sorting a NimH from a NiCad will save a lot of extra effort and energy on the back end.
Then, as you identify more wastes (and the typical condition that it arrives in), then you can figure out a way to profit from that, too.
Re:Conservation of energy (Score:5, Interesting)
This process will NOT "create" energy. In fact, I doubt it will have any more efficiency than the current conventional methods of turning trash into useful components. Keep in mind that vaporization of any solids from room temperature it going to take a massive amount of energy. Spinning turbines with the gasses until it condenses is an obvious step to take, but there is a lot of legislation that can be made to supplant the need for more technology. Just take a look at Germany. You can get a hefty fine for putting a can in the bio-degradable receptacle, but those guys have one helluva disposal system.
Way to have no idea what you're talking about. I've read several articles [popsci.com] on this process and the man behind it.
Yes, it takes a lot of energy to start the reaction and form the initial plasma. Once it is started, however, as long as it is fed fuel (garbage, or any compound matter), the reaction will continue. The process completely breaks apart whatever is fed to it into its elementary components, thus effectively neutralizing virtually every known toxin and hazardous substance, the only exception is radioactive elements which cannot be broken down any further without undergoing a nuclear reaction.
Regarding energy output, this method produces energy in the form of heat from the plasma itself which can be harnessed and it produces syngas. Both of which are useful. this process has been in trials for some time now and has been proven to work. The reason everyone isn't running to it is that the plants are expensive to build, and never been done wide scale before. It's a new tech that the people with cities to run and people to protect are dubious about. New York and Ottawa Canada both plan on having plasma gasification plants, afaik.
Think of it like a really big fire. To start a fire a lot of initial energy is needed. Once it is started, it will keep going as long as it has fuel. The bonds in all molecules contain energy. This process breaks those bonds and release the energy and the result of the process is salable, environmentally friendly materials.
Re:Conservation of energy (Score:1, Interesting)
I work in Gasification. Some background...
Garbage, coal, or really anything organic burned at high pressure. Carbon Monoxide and Hydrogen together is the useful byproduct. Its called Syngas.
Thats for normal gasification, I assume plasma gasification would be similar. I can also say that normal gasification is only economical now through substantial government tax cuts and stuff. I doubt plasma gasification is anywhere near as economical as the normal kind. I hope it takes off though... the more energy the better.
side note: In the energy industry the gasifier mentioned would be considered very very small.
Re:Conservation of energy (Score:2, Interesting)
I am not defending or refuting any idea. The parent post, and a lot of posts at slashdot, seem to suppose that everybody has to have the same ideas that are considered "proven", but really aren't at all.
I just make the point that there isn't any way to reasonably verify the truth of a theory for a normal human being today, and therefore there is, in effect, no way to resolve uncertainty about, for example, anthropogenic global warming. Or anything beyond newtonian physics really.
This process is inherently limited in that it extracts energy from inputs that were created using a lot of energy. That obviously means that it merely recuperates a bit of energy that was initially produced by, say, a nuclear power plant. It can never have a large impact on energy usage due to the laws of thermodynamics.
However, if someone claims that that simply isn't proven, that is a defensible position. I don't have the resources to check the correctness of thermodynamics, do you ?
Therefore you should respect said position, and not claim it to be idiotic. It's really not. At best you can say it conflicts with your beliefs.
Re:Pyrolysis may be more useful (Score:2, Interesting)
You've got it backwards. Raising animals and processing their carcasses into food takes tremendous inputs of land, energy, and water.
There are about 4,896,000,000 acres of arable land on the planet. (From the wik [wikipedia.org] + Google's conversion.) I've heard that one acre can support about four people sustainablely; that would mean 19 billion people could be fed. This guy [permaculture.com] claims that with careful application of permaculture techniques, over 100 people can be feed with vegetables and grains from an acre.
Re:Pyrolysis may be more useful (Score:3, Interesting)
And yet somehow 1lb of steak has so many more calories than 1lb of carrots.
So yes, while I might only be getting a fraction of the calorie content of the 100lbs of veggie matter that it took to make my 1lb steak, I'm still getting more than if I ate an equivalent amount of veggie matter.
And since I'm not capable of eating more than about 2 lbs of food at a time, even when I'm trying really hard. I'm better off letting the Cow do the harvesting and processing for me and then getting the condensed calorie load of a delicious steak.
Re:Vaporware technology (Score:4, Interesting)
For fucks sake. They don't have to get out more energy than they put in damnit.
They are putting in TONS OF GARBAGE. They are liberating a percentage of the energy that went into CREATING THAT GARBAGE. So while they might feed in the equivelant of 1000MW of electricity in garbage and only get back 100MW of usable electricity that they can send over the grid it's STILL an energy "profit" because otherwise the garbage will just slowly liberate its energy as it rots.
This does not have to violate the laws of thermodynamics to be an awesome and profitable way to get energy from garbage.
Re:Could work. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Environmental impact? (Score:1, Interesting)
This is precisely the problem, and it's one that people are working on addressing, specifically in the context of jet engines.
Much like the garbage vaporization, it doesn't matter what you feed such an engine (except for the ratio of atoms): the output distribution of small organic molecules only depends on the temperature and other operating conditions.
Perhaps most tellingly, you -don't- get just CO2, H2O, and N2 out of the back end. There are substantial amounts of small organic compounds.
Re:Conservation of energy (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually this whole thing has been done for a few years by Startech Environmental [startech.net]. There was an article last year in Popular Science about them. IIRC they've already installed a few operating plants and are using them to destroy stuff like medical waste and chemical weapons, while generating surplus electricity for the grid.