Talk:Plasma gasification/Archive 1

Inconsistency in Concerns Section
I was just reading through this to hel with a project, and I noteiced that in the 'concerns' section it mentions that there are no commerical, full-scale MSW processing facilities that have yet been built, and yet the plasma arc facility in Ontario is exactly that, so it needs a bit of clarification. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.183.136.193 (talk) 13:37, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

I looked at editing it, but after looking at the Concerns Section I wanted to delete the first 'paragraph'; which seems to follow no particular point. Seems wordy, unreferenced, irrelevant. The second paragraph doesnt seem to address 'why the concern for liners lasting only one year'. If the 'concern' is over the yearly cost of the liner, then the section shouldnt be labled 'concern'. Second paragraph has overall relevant material, but is unrefined and needs citations. Wiki matzo (talk) 03:53, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

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)

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)

Moved from waste-to-energy
This blurb was out of place and should be incorporated into this article:

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 vessel. 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. 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)

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)

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.

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)

So to clear this up, the machine needs electricity to get started, then it generates enough electricity to keep its cycle going.It also makes syngas that can create even more electricity. I am assuming that the amount of gas and electricity generated will depend on how hydrocarbon rich the input substance is. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.32.229.20 (talk) 02:42, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

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.
 * The Hawaii state agency that gave the negative report mentioned in the article to the state legislature said the agency estimated that electrical usage is about 37% of the operational cost of GeoPlasma's arc furnace landfill waste proposal. Despite the negative agency report, according to the online edition of the Honolulu Advertiser, the Hawaii state legislature has gone ahead and approved state construction bonds for the project. K. Kellogg-Smith (talk) 19:56, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

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

[Another addition by another reader] I have no knowledge as to whether it's up and running, but Waste Management has a proposed facility in Arlington, OR. It should be in either operating or proposed sections of the article, whichever is appropriate. See http://www.environmentalleader.com/2010/03/08/waste-management-to-add-landfill-plasma-gasification-unit/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.37.171.28 (talk) 15:12, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

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)

Poorly written
This article reads like a ad, especially the part about Swindon, Wiltshire APP. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.211.201.174 (talk) 09:12, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Heading suggestions...
Perhaps the locations could be made shorter (just "City, Country" instead of "City, County/State, Country"), and then also the company names put within the section text rather than being part of the actual heading. --Emesee (talk) 05:04, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Hawaii reference has been edited as it seems historic and little relevant to recent plasma developments.

ANel —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.3.231.85 (talk) 11:20, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Plasco reportedly offers to create pag plant in vancover... and about the note about the redirect
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/008176.html... I'm not convinced the note about the redirect is needed. Emesee (talk) 02:54, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Wastes Made By Plasma Arc Disposal
This article is WAY too general and incomplete to be of much use. It mentions nothing of the slag that is produced by plasma arc and the possibility of dioxin production which is known to happen with operational plasma arc facilities.24.83.148.131 (talk) 08:44, 2 January 2009 (UTC)BeeCier

The article needs images, explanatory flow diagrams of plasma arc gasification, plasma torch gasification and gasplasma (fluid bed gasification and plasma polishing of syngas). Also comparative improved emissions standards information (eg dioxins/furans, fine particle levels) when compared to Energy from Waste/Waste to Energy incinerator facilities. Government/Evironmental agency product protocols for the vitrified solid or Plasmarok trademark would be beneficial —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.6.229.119 (talk) 18:36, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

There is little peer reviewed research to suggest plasma furnace 3000-5000 degree C temperatures and molecular dissocaition temperature produce dioxins/furans. This is not known. Incinaration at 850-1000 degrees C over PVC is known to produce dioxins/furans via oxidation. What is known is the production of micro and nano particle emissions at these plasma temperatures. This is the relevant area of necessary research to evaluate whether the plasma dissociation conversion process is complete. There is a need to stick with the science rather than starting from the different pro/anti incineration agenda positions.

ANel —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.3.219.71 (talk) 13:02, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Element recovery
Articles I've read on this topic do not discuss the feasibility of recovering the individual elements resulting from plasma arc gasification, which could then be reused, instead of creating slag with limited uses. Any references as to why this is or is not possible would be appreciated. RevWaldo (talk) 19:51, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
 * When I discussed plasma arc technology and the recovery of precious and other metals from the resulting slag with a family friend who spent the last 20 years as a glass furnace production supervisor/troubleshooter for Corning Glass in Corning, New York, he told me that the only facility that he knew of (and had personally seen himself) that could do that was located in Australia, and that it could be done but it is a very expensive three-stage process. As an FYI aside, he told me that Corning, Pittsburgh Plate, Libby-Owens-Ford, and other U.S. glass manufacturers have long since phased out their glass melting furnaces and now use glass produced overseas, primarily because of the cost of meeting stringint U.S. EPA regulations on allowable levels of pollutants and toxic substances that are carbon arc furnace byproducts carried in the arc furnace smoke and exhaust. K. Kellogg-Smith (talk) 19:24, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

express "UK", "USA" - as "D" for Germany
In German(-language) Wikipedia German (state) people tend to omit "Germany", leaving me (in Austria) uncertain, if small places, named laws etc. refer to Austria or one other of the 3 DACH-countries (plus Liechtenstein and Südtirol) where German is spoken. In English Wikipedia now encounters the analogous problem to me. English is read much further than in UK and USA, by people that are not sure about all counties in GB and states of the USA. Would be nice, assist easy understanding to read UK (or GB) resp. USA behind names of place, although if they include already a UK-county or US-state. --Helium4 (talk) 09:21, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Plasma Pyrolysis Waste Treatment and Disposal
It seems that an article titled Plasma Pyrolysis Waste Treatment and Disposal covers the exact same topic as this one. I propose that it be merged into this article.--TDogg310 (talk) 19:44, 4 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Quite agree. This discussion seems very stale, but there has been no resistance to the idea expressed either here or there. Ben   Mac  Dui  09:55, 9 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Wait. From the process technology point of view plasma arc and plasma pyrolysis are slightly different technologies. However, they are both plasma gasification technologies. I suggest to wait with merging until the scope of this article is clear. The same technology is tested for the heavy hydrocarbons gasification, so the scope should be wider than just waste disposal. Beagel (talk) 11:58, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Scope and title
At the moment we have this article called Plasma arc waste disposal and article called Plasma Pyrolysis Waste Treatment and Disposal. Although these processes are technologically sightly different, they may be commonly described as plasma gasification. Although both of these articles talk more about the plasma gasification in general than about technology-specific processes. Unfortunately, at the moment there is no article with this title. Therefore I think that these two articles should be merged (see also the relevant proposal above) and moved to the title Plasma gasification. At the same time, the scope of this article should be re-defined. By my understanding, the article should describe the process principles and technologies. However, at the moment the most of this articles just lists different commercial projects. I propose to create a new section called 'Commercialization' which summaries different projects information and to move the current long information about projects into new article called Plasma gasification commercialization or List of the plasma gasification facilities or something similar. Another issue with the scope is that although plasma gasification is commercially used for the waste disposal only, it has been proposed and tested also for the biomass gasification and heavy hydrocarbons (oil sands; oil shale) production. If the article is renamed to Plasma gasification, this information could be added here. There is no sense to create a separate article for this if the used plasma gasification technologies are same. So in general, lets combine the existing information under the parent article which will be Plasma gasification}} and, if necessary, create more specific articles later (e.g. [[Plasma gasification commercialization). Beagel (talk) 13:21, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Popular Science does a blurb.
Some of this information should probably be incorporated.

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/873aae7bf86c0110vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.68.231.66 (talk • contribs) 19 February 2007


 * 404 - Mountainninja (talk) 22:49, 26 September 2014 (UTC)