High-Powered Plasma Turns Garbage Into Gas

[IDemo]

From the highway, one of the biggest landfills in the US doesn’t look at all like a dump. It’s more like a misplaced mesa. Only when you drive closer to the center of operations at the 700-acre Columbia Ridge Landfill in Arlington, Oregon, does the function of this place become clear. Some 35,000 tons of mostly household trash arrive here weekly by train from Seattle and by truck from Portland.

Dump trucks inch up the gravel road to the top of the heap, where they tip their cargo of dirty diapers, discarded furniture, lemon rinds, spent lightbulbs, Styrofoam peanuts, and all the rest onto a carefully flattened blanket of dirt. At night, more dump trucks spread another layer of dirt over the day’s deposits, preventing trash from escaping on the breeze.

But as of November, not all the trash arriving at Columbia Ridge has ended up buried. On the southwest side of the landfill, bus-sized containers of gas connect to ribbons of piping, which run into a building that looks like an airplane hangar with a loading dock. Here, dump trucks also offload refuse. This trash, however, is destined for a special kind of treatment—one that could redefine how we think about trash.

In an era when it’s getting more and more confusing to determine where to toss your paper coffee cup—compost? recycle? trash? arrrgh!—and when no one seems to have a viable solution to the problem of humanity’s ever-expanding rubbish pile, this plant represents a step toward radical simplification. It uses plasma gasification, a technology that turns trash into a fuel without producing emissions. In other words: a guilt-free solution to our waste problems.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2012/01/ff_trashblaster/

[xchrom]

1. Interesting. Nt

[OnlinePoker]

2. Ottawa has a working demonstration plant

This has been operating since 2008 and in the fall, received city council endorsement to scale up to full production. This means keeping 300 tonnes a day out of the dump, creating the plasma, and turning it into electricity. I can't really see on their website how much electricity is being generated, but it's being sold to a utility so there has to be an excess there.

http://www.plascoenergygroup.com/our-technology/plasco-trail-road/
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Council+endorses+Plasco+deal/5860056/story.html

[Ian David]

3. I would rather this not be used on materials that can be recycled. n/t

[TheMadMonk]

6. Actually this can make recycling easier.

Most of what's left behind is a metal rich slag.

[Ian David]

10. Oh! That could be cool. n/t

[AnOhioan]

4. Thanks for linking this article

Very interesting, posted it on a Facebook page created by those in opposition to a plan in Cleveland to build and operate an old fashioned "Trash to energy" facility...and all the associated pollutants it would create.

[FailureToCommunicate]

5. Great Scot!!

Load up the DeLorean!

[MADem]

9. +1!!! nt

[guardian]

7. Sounds like it uses a lot of energy

What is the carbon footprint?

[MADem]

8. I love this kind of stuff! This is the future!!! nt

[XemaSab]

11. This technology is... controversial

In 2003, Alameda Power and Telecom (APT), the public power agency of the City of Alameda,
California, began a study to look at technologies that might help generate small amounts of power
for future city energy needs. APT spent over $500,000 hiring consultants, who assured city officials,
the media and the public that gasification technologies would have no emissions and could generate
electricity cleanly by treating solid waste. One of APT’s consultants, Dan Predpall of URS
Corporation, shocked residents and recyclers when he told the Alameda Public Utilities Board that
they would no longer have to recycle, as that would now be unnecessary as a gasification plant
would supposedly be the new recycling technology.
2
APT had first discussed siting the garbage plant in a low-income community of color in San
Leandro, without discussing this with residents or city officials. Residents and environmental justice
groups responded by forming a three-city grassroots coalition that challenged the claims of “no
emissions” and advocated for clean, renewable energy, and the mayor of San Leandro spoke strongly Incinerators In Disguise: Case Studies 6
against the project.
3
The Alameda Public Utilities Board expressed reservations about the claims of
the city’s own consultants and voted against proceeding with further study on these “conversion
technologies” until a future time when there might be more verifiable data upon which to base a
decision.
4
The utility also modified its criteria for new electricity sources to exclude anything
considered an emerging technology, including MSW gasification.
5

http://www.no-burn.org/downloads/Incinerators%20in%20Disguise:%20Case%20Studies%20of%20Gasification,%20Pyrolysis,%20and%20Plasma%20in%20Europe,%20Asia,%20and%20the%20United%20States%20.pdf

And on edit, here's a pro article:

http://biowaste.blogspot.com/2007/01/benefits-of-conversion-technologies.html


(Full disclosure: I have no idea who is behind the "No Burn" group. I also know Dan Predpall, and he's a smart guy, but very... focused.)

[hunter]

12. The problem with incineration will always be...

... sorting the stuff to be incinerated.

There's too much incentive to cheat.

You get a plant approved for forestry, agricultural, or some other specific waste stream, with strict conditions to keep it clean, and the next thing you know somebody's feeding the plant coal, construction waste, or plain old garbage for profit$.

It's happened again and again across the nation, from Maine to California.

[tclambert]

13. This article desperately needs a video.

And the device needs a cool name, like Illudium Q-36 Space Modulator.

[greg2012]

14. Very interesting

Gassification is like solar power: it's a technology that, if we can get the price curve down enough, could totally transform one aspect of society to become much, much "greener."
sciatic nerve pain

[dixiegrrrrl]

15. OP has been ...re-cycled.

MIRT removed him, looks like.