Tuesday
26May2009
Waste To Energy Plasma Conversion Explained
Tue, May 26, 2009 at 21:30
Or, Something Better Than Recycling?
In the 5th article article of my series, Recycling Isn't Green, Ron of Pacific Steel & Recycling asked that RecycleBill explain Waste To Energy Plasma Conversion and its uses. Time to strike an arc.
In RecycleBill's backyard there are currently 3 hens and 4 juvenile chickens living the good life and pooping wherever they like. Now with all those birds some might think the poop to be a big problem but actually, other than eggs, poop is the best thing that comes from a chicken's butt.
You see, I take the chicken droppings, mix them with straw, grass clippings, any vegetable scraps my birds won't eat and leaves, and compost them until dry. Then I turn the sweet concoction over to the red wigglers (earthworms) who convert them to the finest top soil money can't buy. All I have to add is lime to adjust the PH and this stuff is ready to grow anything.
Now if I were a municipal sewer engineer I might find dealing with poop to be a problem as massive amounts of manure be they animal or human can be a really stinky problem with the potential to wreck havoc on the environment of not only my locality but every community between me and the coast. On the backyard chicken farm manure is part of a closed loop recycling program that provides food for humans and chickens with the only byproducts being food for me, food for the birds, food for the worms and all natural, organic fertilizer (food) for my vegetables.
So where would I look if I were a municipal sewer engineer with too much poop on my hands? For starters I would look for a sink full of hot soapy water and afterwards I'd look towards Waste To Energy Plasma Conversion (W2EPC) as a means to tighten the loop and clean up the mess. W2EPC was invented by an American company called Startech Environmental Corporation, winner of the Wall Street Journal's Technology Innovation Award "The Best and the Brightest."
If you happen to work in the scrap metal industry you may be familiar with plasma cutters. At RecycleBill's day job we don't own a plasma torch but we do occasionally rent one when we need to cut something like high grade stainless steel. Developed by military contractors in the 1940s, plasma cutters work by forcing inert gases like nitrogen, oxygen, argon or water (steam) through an electric arc enabling them to reach temperatures so high (around 30,000 F.) that atoms begin to split while they convert not only the gases used but the materials cut into the 4th state of matter-- plasma. And they offer far more control than regular cutting and welding torches.
If you take this same technology, seal it into an air-tight, closed vessel and add a few trade secrets known only to manufacturers of plasma technology you get waste to energy plasma conversion-- a process that can turn anything good, bad or ugly into energy and ceramics. And when you consider that W2EPC createsfar more energy than it uses while reducing 750 barrels of waste anything-- even mixed wastes-- into 1 barrel of a ceramic like, non toxic sand you'll understand why I've tried to persuade Greensboro, North Carolina to invest in W2EPC.
Alas, our City Council prefers to build roads across our closed landfill to develop land no one wants to live on and more empty strip malls.
So what can you convert to energy using W2EPC? The answer-- ANYTHING you need to safely get rid of. Sewage sludge, medical waste, bombs, noisy neighbors bricks, plastics, contaminated soil, old pressure treated lumber, explosives, chemical weapons, deadly disease spores, anthrax, you name it. Okay, maybe not the noisy neighbors.
Now don't get me wrong. If it can be recycled safely and at a profit then it needs to be recycled ASAP. But if it happens to be toxic, dangerous, deadly or too costly to recycle (like the billions of pounds of toxic plastics that fill our landfills and make up Gilligan's Island) then W2EPC is the best way we know to rid us of potential environmental nightmares.
And unlike gasification which can't process everything or incineration with its toxic emissions, W2EPC has neither of these problems.
Continue reading Reduce, Reuse, Recycle And Rethink.
In the 5th article article of my series, Recycling Isn't Green, Ron of Pacific Steel & Recycling asked that RecycleBill explain Waste To Energy Plasma Conversion and its uses. Time to strike an arc.
In RecycleBill's backyard there are currently 3 hens and 4 juvenile chickens living the good life and pooping wherever they like. Now with all those birds some might think the poop to be a big problem but actually, other than eggs, poop is the best thing that comes from a chicken's butt.
You see, I take the chicken droppings, mix them with straw, grass clippings, any vegetable scraps my birds won't eat and leaves, and compost them until dry. Then I turn the sweet concoction over to the red wigglers (earthworms) who convert them to the finest top soil money can't buy. All I have to add is lime to adjust the PH and this stuff is ready to grow anything.
Now if I were a municipal sewer engineer I might find dealing with poop to be a problem as massive amounts of manure be they animal or human can be a really stinky problem with the potential to wreck havoc on the environment of not only my locality but every community between me and the coast. On the backyard chicken farm manure is part of a closed loop recycling program that provides food for humans and chickens with the only byproducts being food for me, food for the birds, food for the worms and all natural, organic fertilizer (food) for my vegetables.
So where would I look if I were a municipal sewer engineer with too much poop on my hands? For starters I would look for a sink full of hot soapy water and afterwards I'd look towards Waste To Energy Plasma Conversion (W2EPC) as a means to tighten the loop and clean up the mess. W2EPC was invented by an American company called Startech Environmental Corporation, winner of the Wall Street Journal's Technology Innovation Award "The Best and the Brightest."
If you happen to work in the scrap metal industry you may be familiar with plasma cutters. At RecycleBill's day job we don't own a plasma torch but we do occasionally rent one when we need to cut something like high grade stainless steel. Developed by military contractors in the 1940s, plasma cutters work by forcing inert gases like nitrogen, oxygen, argon or water (steam) through an electric arc enabling them to reach temperatures so high (around 30,000 F.) that atoms begin to split while they convert not only the gases used but the materials cut into the 4th state of matter-- plasma. And they offer far more control than regular cutting and welding torches.
If you take this same technology, seal it into an air-tight, closed vessel and add a few trade secrets known only to manufacturers of plasma technology you get waste to energy plasma conversion-- a process that can turn anything good, bad or ugly into energy and ceramics. And when you consider that W2EPC creates
Alas, our City Council prefers to build roads across our closed landfill to develop land no one wants to live on and more empty strip malls.
So what can you convert to energy using W2EPC? The answer-- ANYTHING you need to safely get rid of. Sewage sludge, medical waste, bombs, noisy neighbors bricks, plastics, contaminated soil, old pressure treated lumber, explosives, chemical weapons, deadly disease spores, anthrax, you name it. Okay, maybe not the noisy neighbors.
Now don't get me wrong. If it can be recycled safely and at a profit then it needs to be recycled ASAP. But if it happens to be toxic, dangerous, deadly or too costly to recycle (like the billions of pounds of toxic plastics that fill our landfills and make up Gilligan's Island) then W2EPC is the best way we know to rid us of potential environmental nightmares.
And unlike gasification which can't process everything or incineration with its toxic emissions, W2EPC has neither of these problems.
Continue reading Reduce, Reuse, Recycle And Rethink.
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Reader Comments (2)
You write it "creates far more energy than it uses", but not according to StarTech's own website.
It looks like W2EPC might generate enough energy to keep itself running, provided you give it the right type of feedstock. But there seems to be a big difference between StarTech's "residual" and your "far more energy than it uses". I suspect that if it really did generate far more energy than it uses--at least in a form that could be useful--there would be no problem selling both utilities and waste processors on the system. As it is, such a system looks like it would still be a big ongoing cost to it's owner in the form of consumables and supplies (gas, injector tips, whatever) even after it's hefty purchase and startup costs are paid.
Am I missing something, or were you being a bit disingenuous with this article?
CharlesB,
To answer some of your concerns:
"I suspect that if it really did generate far more energy than it uses--at least in a form that could be useful..."
I think I should dropped the word "far" from my statement. I'll cross it out. I'm not trying to be disingenuous.
From Startech's online brocure (pdf) "The converter makes money for our customers from the first hour of operation."
You also stated: "...there would be no problem selling both utilities and waste processors on the system."
The problem with selling utilities is too often political-- not logical. Take my hometown, Greensboro, NC. where City Council is planning to spend $18 Million Dollars of Federal Stimulus monies to pave 4 lane divided throughfares through a 1000 acre politically closed landfill that was rated the best run landfill in NC and according to the NC Department of Natural Resourses has 50 years of life left in it. Who controls and fills most of the seats on our city council? Developers who are chomping at the bit to build homes and stripmalls with stimulus funds for shovel ready projects. This 1000 acre plot is the largest undeveloped piece of property remaining in the county. In Montana 1000 acres is still commonplace-- here it's unheard of. I suspect most cities are hardly any different when it comes to politics-- some just have more land they've yet to lay to waste.
Sadly, politics and the personal wealth of our policitians plays a far bigger role in steering our cities than it should. I'm sure your home in ?Montana? is not much different than my North Carolina when it comes to dirty local politics.
As for private waste processors: InEnTec-- a Startech competitor-- just sold a plasma conversion system of their own design to Waste Management-- one of the largest waste processors in the USA.
As for private utilities such as our own Duke Energy-- they seem slow to change but there is hope as earlier this week I signed the little scrap metal recycler I work for as a potential site for a solar farm. I hope we're accepted.
InEnTec and Startech are 2 of a number of companies selling various forms of waste to energy systems. Some are dirty incenirators and nothing more-- some have vast potential. In the case of Startech, they have been quite successful outside the US in places like Europe where garbage has been piling up far longer than here at home. InEnTech only came upon my personal radar a few days ago so I don't know much about them.