Garbage Problem? Vaporize It.
A Florida county has grand plans to ditch its dump, generate electricity and help build roads — all by vaporizing garbage at temperatures hotter than the sun.
The $425 million facility expected to be built in St. Lucie County will use lightning-like plasma arcs to turn trash into gas and rock-like material. It will be the first such plant in the nation operating on such a massive scale and the largest in the world.
Supporters say the process is cleaner than traditional trash incineration, though skeptics question whether the technology can meet the lofty expectations.
The 100,000-square-foot plant, slated to be operational in two years, is expected to vaporize 3,000 tons of garbage a day. County officials estimate their entire landfill — 4.3 million tons of trash collected since 1978 — will be gone in 18 years.
No byproduct will go unused, according to Geoplasma, the Atlanta-based company building and paying for the plant.
Synthetic, combustible gas produced in the process will be used to run turbines to create electricity — about 120 megawatts a day — that will be sold back to the grid. The facility will operate on about a third of the power it generates, free from outside electricity.
About 80,000 pounds of steam per day will be sold to a neighboring Tropicana Products Inc. facility to power the juice plant's turbines.
Sludge from the county's wastewater treatment plant will be vaporized, and a material created from melted organic matter — up to 600 tons a day — will be hardened into slag, and sold for use in road and construction projects.
"This is sustainability in its truest and finest form," said Hilburn Hillestad, president of Geoplasma, a subsidiary of Jacoby Development Inc.
For years, some waste-management facilities have been converting methane — created by rotting trash in landfills — to power. Others also burn trash to produce electricity.
But experts say population growth will limit space available for future landfills.
"We've only got the size of the planet," said Richard Tedder, program administrator for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection's solid waste division. "Because of all of the pressures of development, people don't want landfills. It's going to be harder and harder to site new landfills, and it's going to be harder for existing landfills to continue to expand."
The plasma-arc gasification facility in St. Lucie County, on central Florida's Atlantic Coast, aims to solve that problem by eliminating the need for a landfill. Only two similar facilities are operating in the world — both in Japan — but are gasifying garbage on a much smaller scale.
Up to eight plasma arc-equipped cupolas will vaporize trash year-round, nonstop. Garbage will be brought in on conveyor belts and dumped into the cylindrical cupolas where it falls into a zone of heat more than 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The $425 million facility expected to be built in St. Lucie County will use lightning-like plasma arcs to turn trash into gas and rock-like material. It will be the first such plant in the nation operating on such a massive scale and the largest in the world.
Supporters say the process is cleaner than traditional trash incineration, though skeptics question whether the technology can meet the lofty expectations.
The 100,000-square-foot plant, slated to be operational in two years, is expected to vaporize 3,000 tons of garbage a day. County officials estimate their entire landfill — 4.3 million tons of trash collected since 1978 — will be gone in 18 years.
No byproduct will go unused, according to Geoplasma, the Atlanta-based company building and paying for the plant.
Synthetic, combustible gas produced in the process will be used to run turbines to create electricity — about 120 megawatts a day — that will be sold back to the grid. The facility will operate on about a third of the power it generates, free from outside electricity.
About 80,000 pounds of steam per day will be sold to a neighboring Tropicana Products Inc. facility to power the juice plant's turbines.
Sludge from the county's wastewater treatment plant will be vaporized, and a material created from melted organic matter — up to 600 tons a day — will be hardened into slag, and sold for use in road and construction projects.
"This is sustainability in its truest and finest form," said Hilburn Hillestad, president of Geoplasma, a subsidiary of Jacoby Development Inc.
For years, some waste-management facilities have been converting methane — created by rotting trash in landfills — to power. Others also burn trash to produce electricity.
But experts say population growth will limit space available for future landfills.
"We've only got the size of the planet," said Richard Tedder, program administrator for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection's solid waste division. "Because of all of the pressures of development, people don't want landfills. It's going to be harder and harder to site new landfills, and it's going to be harder for existing landfills to continue to expand."
The plasma-arc gasification facility in St. Lucie County, on central Florida's Atlantic Coast, aims to solve that problem by eliminating the need for a landfill. Only two similar facilities are operating in the world — both in Japan — but are gasifying garbage on a much smaller scale.
Up to eight plasma arc-equipped cupolas will vaporize trash year-round, nonstop. Garbage will be brought in on conveyor belts and dumped into the cylindrical cupolas where it falls into a zone of heat more than 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
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That they are willing to be responsible for the funding themselves is either a good sign, or an indication of how desperate they are to want to believe it.
1. It is not a perpetual motion machine, but it sounds like a good deal. It uses some energy to change trash into a form that can be used as fuel (just like you could use some energy to convert a tree into firewood logs). It consumes trash and makes energy.
2. YES, excellent point- what about mercury, arsenic, lead, other toxic elements? Are plastics and poisons completely broken down into elements or safe compounds? How stable and binding is the slag produced? Would using it to pave roads release toxins on your street in the process?
3. Yes, we should be skeptical, and ask tough questions, and get answers. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. But if this company is willing to build this project without taxpayer money, and have satisfied all questions, it might be reasonable to allow ONE plant to be built. Then we can test whether the claims are true, and hold them accountable if they are not.
RE: Ethanol comment: it takes 11 calories of fuel to make 10 calories of ethanol. It is only economically feasible with and because of huge government lobbying and subsidies. Over 95% of the corn grown goes to feed livestock or is made into corn syrup which is helping fuel the obesity pandemic around the world.
From the write-up, it appears the process generates more energy than it consumes ... a perpetual motion machine??? I don't think so (but would sure love to be wrong on this).
Ethanol made from CORN, you know, the stuff we need to EAT, was going to knock gasoline off the map with cheap replenishable ethanol. Just one itsy bitsy problem- its now MORE expensive than gasoline, it has about 10% LESS energy which means you have to buy and burn about 10% MORE to drive the same miles, and then why would farmers sell their corn for food at $10 a bushel when the fuel conglomerates would pay double that to get it to make into FUEL? see any problem there?
Now the discovery of a HUGE oil field in the gulf and the price of gas dropping fast and now ethanol will no longer be viable price-wise. Meanwhile billions are being invested in ethanol producing plants- BAD timing huh?
Saw how well THAT worked eh?
The real crux of the matter is, not that we have to conserve,reduce,reuse, turn the thermostat down one more degree and shut the lights off earlier, its that we have TOO MANY PEOPLE! the biggest contribution to saving the planet and environment is not recycling, it's NOT HAVING MORE CHILDREN!
Remember how nuclear power plants when they were going up in the 70's were going to make power SOOO cheap they could flat rate bill everyone and do away with meters?
Saw how well THAT worked eh?
Electric cars?
Remember how they were touted as the new technology to replace gasoline- just plug em in and go when charged, no pollution (except at the power plants stacks) and oops, they forgot to consider all those LEAD batteries and that the power grids can't handle such a huge load if large numbers of people switched.
Saw how well THAT worked eh?