Proprietary methods quench the obtained fuel gas at a high enough temperature and low pH to disallow the formation of furans and dioxins. The high temperatures obtainable through the use of plasma as a heat source raises the thermal efficiency of the process resulting in a smaller project footprint as well as decreased size and cost for the necessary gas scrubbing equipment.

1. “It uses an tremendous amount of energy to create the plasma arc and rarely energy balances. ”
I assume your basing this comment on your many years in the industry? No? How about your vast piles of data and research you’ve poured through…no? really? how about a single article or piece of data??? NO?! So you’ve never heard of this technology before and automatically assumed it is a failure… good to know.

Well, how about my personal opinion/fact. This device, which creates the ‘plasma arc’ as it’s commonly known, WILL produce more energy then it takes to run it. Why is my opinion fact and yours utter non-sense? Because mine is based on fact. Please note in this article it says that this will be the first such station in the ‘United States’, not the world. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada (where I use to live not to long ago) has a small scale version up and running, it only does 200 tonnes a day, but it manages to produce more energy then it uses. Japan also has plasma arc technology, although their pilot facilities only burned through 166 tonnes a day, and they did fail to produce more energy then they used. Does this mean the technology is unviable like cgravin claims? No, not even a little. Small-scale plants are not as effecient as large scale plants. They need to produce the same strength plasma arc as a large scale plant, so putting through a small amount of trash is not the smartest design, hence why these are pilot facilities that serve as a proof of concept. They were build yearrssss ago, late 1990′s if memory serves. There have been a lot of advancements in the technology since then, otherwise no one would be investing in these facilities! Yes, there is empirical evidence to back this up.

2. “Pulverizing trash releases heavy metals into the atmosphere that leads to our rivers, streams, and aquifers.”
And where did you dig up this gem? So dumping all of our trash into big piles on the ground (trash yards) is better for the environment? Hell, let’s just throw it in the lake while we’re at it! Or the ocean! No, Plasma Arc breaks down trash…not pulverize it in the sense where you crush it. How many things have you run through at 10k degrees? Not much I’d imagine, the fact is, most of it is incinerated and there is almost no by-product.

Also, next time, BEFORE you post, READ the article, not just the title.
“Plasma Gasification plants generate much less emissions than standard waste incineration plants,”
So, the article has even stated that we’ll be putting LESS emissions into the air…and where are you getting this we’ll be putting more into the air? Cause that’s not how I read this. But then again, I’m reading it in English, not make believe.

Edwin made a nice point here, recyclable materials and heavy metals can be removed from the trash entering the plasma arc…the plasma arc runs most effectively on organic matter anyway…

So, I hope this has dis-spelled any idiocy that Cgravin has attempted to disseminate, I sincerely apologize for his comments to everyone who reads this and I whole-heartedly support implementing an minimum IQ requirement to post from now on so that we no longer have to listen to uneducated prattle that undermines important advancements in renewable/sustainable technologies such as this.

Thank you.

Second, the output gas is very clean. With the machine I’ve read about (Starteck’s machine in the second picture) they have a complex and highly efficient system of separators and scrubbers. In the end only hydrogen and other useful gasses like methane are produced. Anything else is trapped and contained. The trapped waste is stored in a stable inert medium which can then be deposed of properly.

In the end, this process takes trash and turns it into useful products in the form of gasses and energy. The little byproducts that are left behind are in a much more stable form than they probably were as trash. The only drawback to this process that I’ve seen so far is that it is CRAZY expensive to start up. After that, though, it pretty much runs itself.

If you could burn it cleanly, that’d be great. We have piles of cardboard and paper lying around, which is “supposed” to get recycled, but just sits in piles rotting, because we like our coffee cups and printer paper white. And bleaching it is time consuming and energy wasteful.

But even if you take a bunch of the metal and ceramic out of the trash first, there’s still going to be loads of elements in the mix besides hydrogen and carbon. Chlorine and sulfur are in many plastics. Are you going to be able to seperate and capture these elements, or does that just get dumped into the air after throwing it through the turbine?

Of course, once we all get with the program and move into domes, we won’t have to worry about any of that.

First, do the recycling and metals reclamation FIRST; nobody said that ALL TRASH had to be run through this thing, don’t be silly.

Second, starting the plasma is going to cost energy but to be commercially viable the energy released by the trash will have to be able to both sustain the plasma plus create extra energy. This is part of the process of making it commercially viable.

Pulverizing trash releases heavy metals into the atmosphere that leads to our rivers, streams, and aquifers.

Also, most of the trash that’s pulverized could be recycled or reused at a much higher value that as expensive energy.