Some things are very difficult to recycle. Most of the time, leftover waste will end up in landfills or incinerators. This is where the âPlasma Gasification Process (PGP)â comes in. The process offers a zero waste solution to converting garbage to a clean synthetic gas and other products to make electricity, fertilizer, construction material, salt and clean water.
PGP is a thermal process that involves the application of intense heat to waste materials in a completely closed, controlled, and oxygen-starved environment. This process converts waste materials into a clean synthetic gas and heat that can be used to generate electricity. This is not an incineration process because no burning occurs.
There are three products produced by PGP. The main product of the process is a synthetic gas produced when the volatile elements in the waste material are reduced to their base molecules. This gas is used to generate electricity by feeding it into the same type of gas engine used in the production of electricity from natural gas.
The second product of the process is heat which produces steam. The steam is collected and fed into the electricity generation process to improve its efficiency.
The third and final product of the process is a glass-like reusable solid (otherwise known as slag) that is produced when the non-volatile elements of the waste material decompose. As hard and clean as glass, this solid has a variety of uses such as a road or building material additive. The solid does not react with other elements and leaches less than the glass from a common soda bottle.
The PGP system can process any waste stream such as: MSW (Municipal Solid Waste), biomedical waste and spent potliner, a granular waste from aluminum smelting, biomass, oil shale, automobile fluff, lead contaminated soils, municipal sewage sludge, paint sludge, drum reconditioning sludge, organic petrochemical sludge, illicit drugs, high metal content waste, coal and MSW incinerator ashes, paper mill reject waste, fluorescent light ballasts, asbestos containing material, explosives industry waste, rubber tires and industrial hazardous wastes including PCBs and concentrated insecticides.
There is virtually no limit to the amount of waste which can be processed. The PGP system is particularly adaptable to designing total systems around a multiple processing string approach. The string size for waste streams such as MSW can be up to 200 metric tons per day with multiple plasma arc generator heating systems per string. The optimum string size for other types of waste is dictated by the characteristics of the waste itself.
There are no emissions from the PGP system. Air emissions are limited to those produced in the exhaust from operation of the engines or turbines which use the syngas to generate electricity, and meet or better all Canadian or European standards per kwh of electricity produced.
Currently, no other technology generates as much power from a tonne of waste and no other technology has lower emissions per watt of generated power. A current PGP conversion plant can generate up to 1.2 MWh of electricity per tonne of waste â enough to power an average household for 50 days.
To learn more about Zero Waste projects that currently use or plan to use plasma gasification process as part of waste management strategy, go to http://zerowasteottawa.com and http://zerowastevancouver.com/
Â
I work as an independent reporter writing articles on multiple subjects relating to science and clean energy technology.
Enjoyed this article?
More information on Go Green Tips!
