At a cost of $250 Million per machine, Joseph Longo (founder and CEO of Startech Environmental Corporation.) could possibly have the solution to the worlds pollution and energy problems with their plasma converter, because its main fuel source is trash.
Startech’s trash converter uses superheated plasma—an electrically conductive mass of charged particles (ions and electrons) generated from ordinary air—to reduce garbage to its molecular components. First the trash is fed into an auger that shreds it into small pieces. Then the mulch is delivered into the plasma chamber, where the superheated plasma converts it into two by-products. One is a syngas composed mostly of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, which is fed into the adjacent Starcell system to be converted into fuel. The other is molten glass that can be sold for use in household tiles or road asphalt.[Source]
Made from off the shelf components it took almost two decades to design. The plasma converter initially runs on electricity to power up the plasma torches which burn the pre-shredded trash into molecular level. The hydrogen and carbon monixide byproduct (syngas) is then fed into a cooling system which powers the gas turbine that runs the generator. 2/3 of the power generated by the process will be used to keep the cycle running while the rest can be sold to the grid. The machine is designed to handle 2000 tons of trash/day.
So if you’re wondering why we thought of it only now:
Trucking garbage to dumps and landfills was still cheap. Environmental concerns weren’t on the public radar the way they are today, and landfills and incinerators weren’t yet widely seen as public menaces.
Another benefit I can see out of this is that we can reclaim all those dump sites and use them for more productive purposes.
Article here
Category: New Tech
