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: (Score:3, Funny)
Conservation of energy (Score:5, Insightful)
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This process will NOT "create" energy.
seriously. at best this sounds like a marginally novel take on cogeneration [wikipedia.org].
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: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Conservation of energy (Score:4, Funny)
Because they don't have open minds.
Re:Conservation of energy (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it that so many people do not understand the difference between "an open mind" and "a hole in the head"?
A relevant quote I once encountered is: "You need to have an open mind to let new ideas in, but not so open that your brain falls out."
Re:Conservation of energy (Score:5, Insightful)
About the "scientific consensus" : for starters, that is a very ill-defined concept. Second, the scientific consensus was once that the titanic was unsinkable, that the earth was flat, and that some cool looking naked bearded guy in the clouds threw lightning at ill-behaving children.
Your post is so astoundingly wrong that I don't really even know where to begin rebutting it. You start off with a plausible (even if the numbers are completely made up) premise, but then just go on about how we can't trust anything. Not sure what your point is, but it seems to be that since there is always doubt, we shouldn't go with ideas that you disagree with. That generally seems to be the "conservative" position lately. If the science supports what you want to do, shout it from the mountain tops. If it doesn't, bury it and do what you were going to do anyway.
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Neo, there is no spoon.
Re:Conservation of energy (Score:5, Insightful)
These are the kind of energy the world has to seriously consider. Something that solves one problem (reducing the amount of rubbish that ends up in landfills), while also producing useful energy.
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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.
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: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:Conservation of energy (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you saying there's no energy in garbage? I have a box of matches here that says you're wrong.
The theory behind it is this: If you can take the garbage molecules apart and put them back together in a lower energy configuration then you get to keep the profit.
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.
Re:Pyrolysis may be more useful (Score:5, Insightful)
The reality is that we don't have enough planet for everyone to be a meat-eater, at least not in the American sense. For every 100 pounds of grain protein you give to cattle as feed, you only get back 10 pounds of protein as meat. So although American cattle typically spend their lives in a feedlot rather than on arable land, the fact still remains that that land must be used to grow grain to feed the cattle. We could support roughly 10 times more people with the same amount of arable land if everyone was vegetarian.
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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. And even tho our livestock's digestive systems don't process corn properly, THATS OK! cause we can just give them antibiotics in every bite. And yes, this might make them fart and belch excessive amounts of greenhouse gases, but that's not a problem for us farmers in the midwest, now is it? And SURE, thi
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Food is not the only factor. Do you know how much waste is produced by 350 million people? Imagine 10 times that. And I don't mean soda cans and candy wrappers.
Re:Pyrolysis may be more useful (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure exactly what your saying but from what i understand your saying we should kill all other animal life because they are eating all of our fruit, vegtables and grains?
Seriously these animals will need to eat either way, why not feed them and care for them and when the time is right eat their ass(rump roast).
better ways would be to cut down on population growth and reduce the excess waste we have(in eating and throwing out food) as well as develop better ways to increase crop yeilds. Also the ability to increase the locations where we can grow crops would be benifitial.
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.
Re:Pyrolysis may be more useful (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why we don't have enough planet for everyone to be a vegetarian.
uhhh... math fail.
very few of the animals you eat are grazing animals. exceedingly few. the amount of land it takes to graze an animal is huge. These cows are many hundreds of pounds, they need many more times that in feed. I would bet that very fiew of you could find anything in your markets that is not from an industrial (even organic industrial) farm. Whole foods doesn't have local farm food.
The animals are eating vegetation (the lucky ones) and are converting that into something you eat. that is a lossy process. the closer to the source (the sun) you are in the food chain, the more efficient.
I don't recall the exact numbers but the theory is along these lines. Sun shines energy, plants collect this energy and some local molecules and arrange this into a food like substance. This food substance now has (lets say) 20% of the energy that was put into making it available. Now we can eat that or we can let cow-creature eat it. Cow-creature converts it into a fabulously juicy steak for me. Negating any processing/picking/butching/carting/etc the sum of cow-creatures meat has approximately (again, lets say) 20% of the energy that it has consumed available to me in that yummy slab of flesh.
That leaves me getting about 4% of the initially available energy (100*.2*.2) whereas I could have gotten 20% had I eaten the damn carrot (or more likely, corn).
Like I say, numbers are off but no matter what numbers you substitute, you are never going to get out even the same amount of energy that went into making your animal.
As to your land argument, not only do you need space for the animals to live but you have to grow X% more food (and use X% more land) to feed them to get the same amount of food you would have needed.
hey, i like meat but it is not environmentally friendly.
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.
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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 loa
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In the US (and forgive the Americentrism, please) very few cattle _are_ grazing animals. They might graze for six months at a cow-calf operation while they're still nursing, then they're shipped to feedlots and fed corn mash, which is not a natural food for cattle by any means. Nor is the waste used as a fertilizer- it's collected in huge lagoons, occasionally shipped off to landfills. The waste coming out of a feedlot cow can't be used as a USDA organic fertilizer as the cows are fed prophylactic antibioti
Re:Pyrolysis may be more useful (Score:5, Insightful)
We have way more arable land than we do water to irrigate it. It takes 50x as much fresh water to grow a pound of beef as a pound of rice or soy beans. The fresh water constraint will bind long, long before we ever run out of places to grow or graze--in fact it's already being reached in the developing world. In your terms, we could stretch this planet a lot further as vegetarians than as omnivores.
Re:Pyrolysis may be more useful (Score:4, Funny)
Put another way, vegetables are what food eats. :-)
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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:5, Funny)
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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 mod
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This process will NOT "create" energy.
Are you seriously talking about creation of energy in the "conservation of energy" sense? In that case, my reply would be: Duh. But for the sake of the argument I'll assume you just mean that the process requires more than the 60MW those turbines generate.
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.
That's exactly what surprised me in this article. I've heard of using a plasma torch to turn toxic garbage into inert waste, which in itself would be extremely useful. But as I've always understood, it was expensive and only cost energy. Getting some energ
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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.
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:Slow down... (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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?
Re:Environmental impact? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Environmental impact? (Score:4, Funny)
Oxygen is good.
Oxygen was invented by Shampoo.
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:Environmental impact? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's fine, but what about when you reach the end of the process and the atoms/molecules start to cool down? Unless you separate them out, they're going to start to react.
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: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.
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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!
Sunshine (Score:5, Interesting)
If ever the whatcouldpossiblygowrong tag were appropriate...
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!
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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?
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He could get food poisoning from the cafeteria food.
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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:Sunshine (Score:4, Insightful)
seems a bit stingy (Score:5, Insightful)
1.2 kW per household? A hair dryer eats more than this.
You keep your dryers on 24/7? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do not confuse power and energy.
Re:seems a bit stingy (Score:5, Funny)
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or, whatcouldpossiblygrowwrong
Technically true... (Score:5, Informative)
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Say 100 people work at an office. Around 5-ish PM 95 of those go home and turn on the lights there.
However, although there are only 5 people left in the office, all the lights remains on. So, yes, it makes sense to me.
Even when all 100 of them go home, it's still likely that the lights will be on for another couple of hours until the cleaning crew and janitor go home too.
That said, 16:45 sounds like early to me... I'm more & more convinced I'm in the wrong business =(
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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?
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.
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:Artificial limits on power output (Score:4, Insightful)
Too bad they couldn't have had a water tap run to their place and use the excess energy to make hydrogen through electrolysis. And than sell said hydrogen. I mean, if it's free energy...
Re: (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.
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.
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]
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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: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.
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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
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Except, of course, this isn't an incinerator. It's only outputs are syngas, slag, and heat.
I absolutely understand environmentalists objecting to incinerators. All you're doing is taking all that carbon, much of which we've pulled from the ground where it was comfortably sequestered, and liberating it so you can dump it into the atmosphere. Definitely *not* my idea of a trash solution.
But this technology is absolutely clean. Of course, eventually you have to do something with the syngas, but the plant i
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!
Could work. (Score:4, Insightful)
It seams reasonable that a technique like this could get net energy out, since it's essentially a fancy trash burner. There's plenty of energy in trash to extract.
The slag could be interesting, though. It will few full of evilness and heavy metals. It probably won't be worse than landfilling since the evilness would otherwise be dumped in the same quantities. I'd be suprised if it was useful for construction. I'd expect water based leaching etc to erode the internal structure of it pretty quickly to a point wherre it's a porus, crumbly rock. I may be wrong about that, though.
Also, it might be easier to refine the slag, since a lot of the annoying bulk waste has been removed.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
A plant that vaporizes things? (Score:3, Interesting)
Isn't that a Slaver Sunflower?
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.
I'd rather have 10 of these than one coal plant (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, the potential for exhuming heavy metals and toxins is high if you don't regulate a plant like this (which it would be). However, we love our coal power plants, and they're absolutely disgusting. It's pathetic that we're still building new ones, yet we haven't built a new power plant in over 20 years (but this is supposed to change by 2010).
Furthermore, landfill trash isn't exactly a valuable resource. I'd much rather pay a little extra and burn away trash then burn coal. Plants like this one (they don't have to use plasma) would be great for helping us transition toward more nuclear and geothermal/wind/solar power.
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.
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?
OK - I'll bite (Score:5, Informative)
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.
I see the newspapers of tomorrow.. (Score:4, Funny)
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: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.
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: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.
Re:Your High School Physics Teacher Called (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're seeing this from the wrong angle. The trash is "fuel" for the turbine. Think along the lines of coal burning power plants. The coal isn't free, it's a resource that is used to create electricity. I don't see how burning trash would be that different?
The article is offline right now.. so i'm really just guessing here. But the purpose of the plant isn't just another powerplant, it's a trash removal plant as well.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:"While Creating Energy" (Score:5, Insightful)
I have some doubts about it producing more energy than it uses, but it could because it is not an isolated system - you keep adding trash
Re: (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: (Score:3, Insightful)
> Just release the carbon into the air, so the trees can use it.
I couldn't work out if that's supposed to be funny or troll or if you're just stupid. I seriously hope it's the first one :)
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?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Er, the chances of individual atoms spontaneously combining to form complex molecules is close to none existent.
So take dioxin's which are a mixture of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Heat this to 6000 Celcius and all the chemical bonds are broken apart, leaving just individual carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Let it cool down to room temperature any you will end up with a mixture of mainly CO2 and H2O, and probably some CO as well depending on how much Oxygen is available during the cooling process.
Obviousl
Re:Summary, pt. 2 (Score:5, Insightful)
If you count landfill products as free fuel, then you're generating something. You're turning something that is unwanted into something valuable.
If you collect solar energy, you're not creating energy. You're turning those photons into something more useful than heat and reflected solar radiation.
I think a lot of people commenting on this article have a weird definition of generator/generation.
Re: (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 th
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not stupid at all. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, next time you are at the drive-thru, don't ask for a cup, just let them pour your Coca Cola into your cupped hands, you dick.
It's not too hard to imagine a world where disposable cups are simply not used. Lots of restaurants use glass and clay-ware and employ dishwashers. Drive thrus are a silly hobbit notion which are only 'essential' because other silly hobbit notions make them so. But hey, if you want to buy a coffee and take it away, why not bring your own mug? Lots of people have travel mugs.
Re: (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: (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.