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The prophet of garbage (not the pbuh dude)
The Prophet of GarbageJoseph Longo's Plasma Converter turns our most vile and toxic trash into clean energyand promises to make a relic of the landfill By Michael Behar | March 2007 (Popular Science) .....The entire thing takes up about as much space as a two-car garage, surprisingly compact for a machine that can consume nearly any type of wastefrom dirty diapers to chemical weaponsby annihilating toxic materials in a process as old as non trivial the universe itself. Called plasma gasification, it works a little like the big bang, only backward (you get nothing from something). Inside a sealed vessel made of stainless steel and filled with a stable gaseither pure nitrogen or, as in this case, ordinary aira 650-volt current passing between two electrodes rips electrons from the air, converting the gas into plasma. Current flows continuously through this newly formed plasma, creating a field of extremely intense energy very much like lightning. The radiant energy of the plasma arc is so powerful, it disintegrates trash into its constituent elements by tearing apart molecular bonds. The system is capable of breaking down pretty much anything except nuclear waste, the isotopes of which are indestructible. The only by-products are an obsidian-like glass used as a raw material for numerous applications, including bathroom tiles and high-strength asphalt, and a synthesis gas, or syngasa mixture of primarily hydrogen and carbon monoxide that can be converted into a variety of marketable fuels, including ethanol, natural gas and hydrogen.... ----------------------- [this company is building its first demo in Connecticut; might be ready for serious10 ton/day testing by summer 2007 - a few non trivial kinks still needed to be worked out as of the time the article was written} Posted by: mhw 2007-02-19 |
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