Plasma Waste Processing
Mike Chino at INHABITAT 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! Cutting down on landfill waste while generating energy is a pretty win-win proposition, and the plant will also be able to melt down inorganic materials to be reused for other applications, such as in roadbed and heavy construction.
I think it’s important to remember that, while reclaiming as much energy as possible from a process is admirable, this process is NOT a green electricity source. It will always require more energy to vaporise the waste than is recovered by using the “syngas” to drive turbines.