Talk:Plasma arc waste disposal

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Contents 1 Atomic Toilets Removed 2 Popular Science does a blurb. 3 Content from Waste Management article 4 Moved from waste-to-energy 4.1 Plasma arc technology 5 NPOV 6 Merging? 7 Inconsistency!! 8 Global View 9 A good info source 10 Additon to the article 11 Sacremento negotiating to build a plasma arc waste disposal facility

[edit] Atomic Toilets Removed

This was forged for amusement, and used as a source in a forum. It was completely made-up. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.138.7.67 (talk) 01:14, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Popular Science does a blurb.

Some of this information should probably be incorporated.

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/873aae7bf86c0110vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html

[edit] Content from Waste Management article

I cut some content out of the Waste management article that fit in this one; seemed a shame to waste it. This article needs some major work to redeem it, though. Needs an expert on the process to describe it properly and some diagrams. Needs editing for NPOV as well. ropable 05:10, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Moved from waste-to-energy

This blurb was out of place and should be incorporated into this article:

[edit] Plasma arc technology

An emerging waste-to-energy technology is plasma arc technology that processes any organic waste materials (common garbage, tires, etc.) and reduces it into gas molecules consisting of the waste material's elemental components (atoms) such as oxygen (O), hydrogen (H) and carbon (C). Once reduced into elemental components, the resulting gases can be used for a variety of value-added purposes, such as energy production using the resulting hydrogen.

Plasma is simply a gas (air) that is ionized by an effective electrical conductor that produces a lightning-like arc of electricity in a controlled vessle. The plasma arc produces an intensely hot plasma plume that renders any organic material into its elemental components. A plasma arc can operate at temperatures as high as 30,000 degrees Fahrenheit. A 200 ton per day plasma arc waste processing plant is being build by Startech Environmental in Panama, and is expected to open in 2008. [1] In the United States, a company called Nuclear Solutions is developing a waste processing plant that will use plasma arc technology to convert used tires into ethanol, for sale to local refineries.

--Alex 11:36, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV

Added Contradict, Totally Disputed, and Commercial tags. This article, in many sections, appears to be cut straight out of a companies brochure. In one section it clamors about how amazing this technology is, in the next it talks about how it's a hoax. This needs to be corrected. 146.115.115.205 19:08, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merging?

Maybe the article 'Plasma Converter' should be merged with this. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Holy triple m (talk • contribs) 16:55, 3 May 2007 (UTC).

This whole article, and the 'Plasma Converter' stub, should really be moved into the 'Gasification' article. The 'Gasification' article describes in detail "four" technologies for converting carbonaceous solid matter into syngas, but does not directly reference the Plasma Arc technology. (There is a "see also" at the bottom of the 'Gasification' article.) This article should be moved in its entirety to the 'Gasification' article, and described as the fifth of five gasification technologies.

Alternatively, this article should be summarized and referenced as one of five technologies in Gasification.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Tom Kaplan (an unregistered casual user) on 6 June 2007.

[edit] Inconsistency!!

I read a article in my local newspaper saying that this creates electricity, but this article says it uses a lot of it. Is one of these articles wrong, or did I misinterpret this one? The newspaper is the Times Picayune of New Orleans —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rynosaur (talk • contribs) 2007-05-31

It looks to me as if there need not be an inconsistency: A plasma arc consumes lots of electrical power, but the implication seems to be that you can get even more back if you burn the gas that comes off the arc. --Slashme 05:40, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

OK, I've checked it out a bit. From the promotional material of a manufacturer of plasma plants:

Our systems have been operating without electric generation due to the low electric rate in the US industrial market; however for our foreign clients in Europe and Asia, we recommend converting the generated synthesis gas from the waste into electric energy, which will supply the torches and the plant and also generate additional revenues for the project from the sale of the net electric production to the local utilities.

So yes, in theory one can generate net electricity from waste disposal this way. --Slashme 06:26, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, so you use electricity to burn the waste into gas and create more by burning the gas. Rynosaur 13:49, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes there is an inconsistancy becuase in the pop sci magizine i read they said that the machine creates enough excess energy to sell back to the electric company and they tend not to lie so i'd have to say that there is a mess up in this article danieljackson 18:05, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Global View

I believe this paragraph doesn't reflect a global view on the subject and could be better improved: "While some believe Federal funding is required to make better progress on this means of waste disposal, (which is scientifically not the same principle as waste Incineration, others note that basic thermodynamics show electric costs to be unavoidably high when processing wet wastes such as municipal wastes." Note that not all governaments are federal in nature. As I am not sure how to improve it, so I submit this to the rest of you.

[edit] A good info source

There is good information on Plasma Garbage conversion at this url: Popular Science [2]. 15:37, 1 May 2007 User:Jarany

[edit] Additon to the article

I have the actual copy of the pop sci. magizine that had a whole article on the plasma converter and the man who invented it when i get a chance i will add a large chuck of info to this articel give me a couple of days to gather the info first and i'm taking off the merge sugestion becuase this and the article in question for the merge are two completly different topics. 01:01, 17 May 2007 User:Danieljackson

[edit] Sacremento negotiating to build a plasma arc waste disposal facility

• 'Sacramento City Council to look at waste-to-energy plant'

• 'City Council of Sacramento California voted to enter negotiations with Westinghouse Plasma Corp. to possibly build a plasma-arc gasification plant' --Emesee (talk) 06:51, 9 March 2008 (UTC)