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Destroy all kinds of debris with temperatures above 1,500 degrees and can generate power, but its development is still in its infancy
The application of plasma gasification technology, as its advocates would provide the system with modern, clean, efficient and long duration, capable of treating all types of waste, even the most difficult, such as tires, hazardous materials, sediment, plastic, etc. The process also generate energy and various products that can be used. However, its development is still at an early stage, and critics say it is an expensive process and not as clean as its proponents advocate.
* Author: By ALEX FERNANDEZ Muerza
* Publication Date: April 7, 2008
This technology is currently used mainly to destroy hazardous wastes, for its clean and efficient way to kill them. So some companies are working to use this system as a system of urban waste recovery.
The system consists of a reactor with torches in their power to inject high voltage and some kind of gas such as oxygen, nitrogen or argon. This process can generate temperatures near the surface of the Sun (over 1,500 º C) and obtain the status of plasma, ie a gas whose atoms have lost or gained electrons. Thus, the links of the molecules are broken and waste in the form of atoms are harmless.
Subsequently, the residual organic matter is converted into a synthesis gas (syngas) composed of hydrogen and carbon monoxide can be used for energy or liquid fuels. For its part, the inorganic wastes are melted in the bottom of the reactor, obtaining a ceramic material that can be devoted to the manufacture of abrasive products such as high temperature insulation (rock wool) or filling the bases of roads.
This process can generate temperatures near the surface the Sun (over 1,500 º C)
In any case, Julian Uriarte, Chairman of the Technical Association for Waste Management and Environment, ATEGRUS, stresses that the implementation of this technology in the recovery of waste is still in incipient state, and is currently employed mainly to destroy hazardous waste.
For example, the town Palencia Carrión de los Condes recently authorized the construction of a plant, mainly recycling tires, which includes among its treatment systems technology. Those responsible, the Hera Group Holding, is one of the pioneers in this technique in Spain, and has a R & D Center in Castellgalí (Barcelona) for improving this system.
Meanwhile, the town of As Somozas Coruña recently began building a plant that incorporates plasma technology from U.S. company Solena to end industrial wastes such as paints, solvents and tires. The ship, at a cost of 60 million euros, will remove six tons of waste per hour, and will generate 15 megawatts of electricity, enough to supply 15,000 homes, according to its leaders. Also, the company plans to put up similar facilities in the province of Cordoba Bélmez.
As to international examples, the plasma gasification plant world's largest is in the "Eco-valley" of Utashinai (Japan). With technology from U.S. company Westinghouse Plasma, is able to transform up to 280 tonnes of waste per day. Reviews
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Not everyone agrees to support this technology. Ecologists in Action believes that it is actually a covert incineration system, and therefore also the risk of forming dioxins, furans and other products of incomplete combustion processes that trigger cancer.
However, proponents of this claim that such facilities comply with environmental requirements, dramatically reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and other harmful compounds such as sulfur dioxide, mercury and nitrogen oxides.
Moreover, the Ecologists in Action Experts add that these plants require a lot of electricity and water, which may jeopardize the supply for human and agricultural use.
Jesús Rincón, chemical Scientific Research Council (CSIC) asserts that while the resulting gases can produce energy, "only pays for a very small proportion of utility costs incurred during the process. "However, this expert defends the technique for processing hospital waste as hazardous or radioactive, which require a more demanding. It is an expensive process, according to a study by the Union Europe, which estimated an expenditure of body 150 and 300 euros per tonne of waste.
Therefore, environmentalists point out that projects of this type of plants have been rejected, for example in 2003 in the town of Alcorisa located in the mining area of \u200b\u200bTeruel.
In short, from Ecologists in Action calls for the implementation of a waste treatment system that is firmly committed to the reduction reuse and recycling, avoiding this type of facility.
"Harnessing nuclear waste as fuel?
based research Various plasma gasification look even take advantage of nuclear waste. The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), an international cooperation program promoted by the Department of Energy United States, working on a new reactor that would use the waste as fuel, producing up to 100 times the energy of conventional reactors and generates 40 % less waste.
Meanwhile, scientists at the Russian Research Center Kurchatov Institute of the Austrian Johann Radon and the Technion Israel Institute of Technology working in the so-called "fusion plasma gasification" (PGM in the acronym), which combines high temperatures and low radioactive energy to transform waste.
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