Westinghouse Plasma Corp. Reactor for SMS Infrastructures Ltd. in India now under construction will process 72 tonnes per day of common hazardous waste when completed in the first quarter of 2008.

Orders are piling up for a technology that creates energy from garbage, with two new projects announced in recent months and several more under consideration. Plasma gasification breaks waste into molecular matter with torches operating at temperatures up to 5,000°F, turning organic matter into synthetic gas and inorganic material into a lava-like slag that can be used for things such as concrete aggregate. Changes in pricing dynamics and carbon-emission worries are making the decades-old technology competitive, says a plasma researcher.
 
In November, Tallahassee, Fla., Municipal Utilities announced it would purchase 35 MW from a plant that will consume 1,000 tons of landfill waste per day. That $165-million plant, being developed by Green Power Systems LLC, Jacksonville, Fla., will be operational in October 2010, says Dick Basford, Green Power vice president. The Harris Group, Denver, is design engineer.
 
Tallahassee will pay $58.90 per MW-hour for the plasma plant’s power, compared with $62 per MWh it is purchasing from a biomass-fueled plant, says Ben Cowart, Tallahassee’s power marketing manager. That’s cheaper than the city’s own plants can produce power. “We believe that there are no environmental downsides, it’s all on the up,” he says. “It solves so many problems.”
 
Plasma gasification technology has been known for more than 30 years, but is just now being considered as a viable alternative for producing energy and disposing of waste because the pricing dynamics of both industries have changed, says Lou Circeo, director of the plasma research program at Georgia Tech. Landfilling is more expensive and demand for renewable energy is growing, he says.

Capital costs for a plasma gasification plant are similar to those for a municipal solid waste incineration powerplant, but plasma-gasification plants are more economical because the plant's inorganic byproduct can be sold to the market as bricks and concrete aggregate, Circeo says. Plasma gasification plants also produce up to 50% more electricity than other gasification technologies, he adds. The process’ carbon dioxide and other emissions are equivalent to those of natural gas, Cowart says.
 
Earlier this year, Sun Energy Group LLC, New Orleans, also announced its intention to build a $500-million plasma gasification facility to generate 138 MW from 2,500 tons of waste per day. The company has chosen a site and has hired CDM of Cambridge, Mass., to aid in the permitting, and Shaw, Stone and Webster Inc. of Baton Rouge, La., for design and engineering.
 
Those two projects are following in the footsteps of the $450-million plasma gasification plant announced last year in St. Lucie County, Fla., being developed by Geoplasma LLC, Atlanta. That facility will generate 160 MW from 3,000 tons of waste per day. In International Falls, Minn., Coronal LLC, Minneapolis, is moving forward with plans to build a facility in International Falls, Minn., to produce synthetic gas that will be used at a nearby paper mill from 150 tons of waste per day.
 
Westinghouse Plasma LLC, is contracted to provide plasma torches for all four facilities, and is beginning preliminary engineering studies on the sites, says Tom Gdaniec, marketing manager for Westinghouse Plasma. When those studies are complete, the companies can move forward with permitting. All four companies intend to begin construction in 2008 and be operational in 2010, but permitting may slow that timeline, Gdaniec says.

Two plasma gasification facilities in India, which will each use 68 tons of hazardous waste per day and generate up to 5 MW, are under construction and scheduled to be operating by June 2008, Gdaniec says.  Those plants, being developed by SMS Infrastructures Ltd., Nagpur, India, are also using Westinghouse torches.
 
Westinghouse is the leader in the industry because its technology is being used in the only commercially operating plant in the world in Japan.
 
The technology has yet to be proved on a large scale. And previous projects have been shuttered because of cost or disposal issues. Some environmentalists are opposed to the technology, likening it to incineration.
 
But Charles Reith, an environmentalist, former professor at Tulane University in New Orleans and now a consultant with Pace Global Energy, has become convinced of the technology’s potential as he has served as consultant for several projects. He admits there could be an issue with the dioxins emitted from a plant ithat is operated incorrectly. But plasma gasification facilities operated properly could prove to be a major solution for the world’s energy and waste disposal demands.
 
“I am highly in favor of development of this technology – it simultaneously may solve different problems, the most urgent of which is global warming,” Reith says.
 
Alter NRG of Calgary, Canada, the parent company of Westinghouse Plasma, says it is in talks on about 30 projects worldwide to use the plasma gasification technology. While converting waste into electricity is the most common application, plasma gasification is planned for use in a coal to diesel fuel project being developed in Kentucky by Fuel Frontiers Inc., Washington, D.C.
 
And independent power producer NRG Energy of Princeton, N.J., has an agreement with Alter NRG to use the plasma gasification technology to retrofit existing coal fired power plants to gasify coal and biomass. NRG is currently pursuing plants to convert its 120-MW Somerset plant in Massachusetts to use the technology.