
Perhaps the most amazing part of the process is that it’s self-sustaining. Just like your toaster, Startech’s Plasma Converter draws its power from the electrical grid to get started. The initial voltage is about equal to the zap from a police stun gun. But once the cycle is under way, the 2,200˚F syngas is fed into a cooling system, generating steam that drives turbines to produce electricity. About two thirds of the power is siphoned off to run the converter; the rest can be used on-site for heating or electricity, or sold back to the utility grid. “Even a blackout would not stop the operation of the facility,” Longo says.
It all sounds far too good to be true. But the technology works. Over the past decade, half a dozen companies have been developing plasma technology to turn garbage into energy. “The best renewable energy is the one we complain about the most: municipal solid waste,” says Louis Circeo, the director of plasma research at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “It will prove cheaper to take garbage to a plasma plant than it is to dump it on a landfill.” A Startech machine that costs roughly $250 million could handle 2,000 tons of waste daily, approximately what a city of a million people amasses in that time span. Large municipalities typically haul their trash to landfills, where the operator charges a “tipping fee” to dump the waste. The national average is $35 a ton, although the cost can be more than twice that in the Northeast (where land is scarce, tipping fees are higher). And the tipping fee a city pays doesn’t include the price of trucking the garbage often hundreds of miles to a landfill or the cost of capturing leaky methane—a greenhouse gas—from the decomposing waste. In a city with an average tipping fee, a $250-million converter could pay for itself in about 10 years, and that’s without factoring in the money made from selling the excess electricity and syngas. After that break-even point, it’s pure profit.
Someday very soon, cities might actually make money from garbage.
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This is another example of how we can solve our own situations. It seems like if we cannot realize a profit within a year, an idea, or invention is worthless. Until we find people with the money and a heart we will wallow in our own garbage. I would love to help any philanthropic organization in the world to discover methods of solving our situations.
from Hancock, ME
Some time ago Paul Pantone had invented, or claimed to invent, a motor running on plasma energy, something akin to "St. Elmo's Fire," perhaps, which was reportedly able to break down carbon atoms into smaller atoms; this was a superefficient engine, or claimed to be.
Not sure of the present status of the Paul Pantone invention claim, but PopSci might want to lump Startech into the same research bracket, although Startech certainly seems to have good backing, and is well established, in comparison to the technology of Paul Pantone. Now, I am not sure of the chemistry and physics involved here, what laws might be suspected of having been broken by Paul Pantone, but perhaps he had something akin to the Startech working principle. The similarity may need some clarification.
Unfortunately, I think quite often the early inventors may be misinterpreted in some aspects of their working principle, so that other later inventors may come along, using their own research path which may well be totally independent and original, knowing nothing of earlier work, or if they know of it, may have believed it was erroneous in some aspects.
Well, this is what seems to have happened, for example, in regard to the 1975 invention by Edwin V. Gray, the "pulsed capacitor discharge electric engine," which was analyzed and stamped Top Secret at GM Dearborn research labs in about 1979. (It won Inventor of the Year award, in 1975, presented by then Gov. Ronald Reagan.)
Yet, today we see ZAP electric car company (stock symbol ZAAP) collaborating with Lotus Engineering and building cars which will use the pulsed capacitor concept, to get 360 horsepower, and 155 top mph; with in-wheel electric engines and pulsed capacitors, and requiring something like 10 minute recharge time; zero to 60 mph time is ~4.5 seconds as I recall, for their luxury Crossover SUV concept, the Zap-X, seating 6 adults. with several hundred mile range per charge.
Pulsed capacitors are also in use by the military for superefficient pumping of high powered laser weapons. Maxwell Technologies is producing these key devices now for the superefficient electric nonpolluting cars and VTOL aircraft of tomorrow, today, although VTOL pioneers still seem just barely aware of the potential in this area. (The potential to "obsolete" roads, bridges, tunnels, and all surface transportation, by using various methods of superefficient VTOL aircraft, with the key power source of pulsed capacitors.)
This would include the 1960s invention, the Seversky Ionocraft, which becomes more efficient with increasing scale, and has no moving parts, so is relatively invulnerable to small arms fire, as compared to present day VTOLs, i.e., our primitive helicopters, most of which do not even feature the advance of counterrotating blade sets, as promoted and engineered by Sikorsky and Woody Norris and some others.. It strains the brain to try to figure out why the USA military planners have kept hands off these key advances; the only explanation would be that they are far beyond these in secret work, and so don't work on the intermediate technologies.
Skeptics may point out that Startech is claiming to put out more energy than they put in, which of course is nonsense-- a skeptic would probably disbelieve the concept of oxidation (fire) based on the same lack of clear thinking. Startech is showing the power of high tech to solve ancient problems, so thanx to PopSci for promoting them and giving them much needed publicity.
One question is whether StarTech will be used for its best applications; we dont want to be destroying recyclables, if they are readily recyclable and usable.
Also I hope Startech will design some home systems... for power and heat..
It would be nice if the print button formatted the text so you could print the article all at once, rather than printing each page, followed by all the ads and commentary - so that each page of the article requires 4 pages of repetitive print.
This seems like an incredible technology. However, every energy has its price. I hope the syngas is environmentally safe. It is composed of mainly hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The hydrogen would be great, but I hope the carbon monoxide would be safe to both the environment and humans. What would they use the carbon for?
I hope more clean and simple technologies like this are invented soon.
To compare this technology with Paul Pantone is absurd. There are more than 150 gasifiers operating around the world and gasification has been around for more than 50 years.
This is one of the reasons why new technology is so difficult to launch. Well intentioned, but misinformed people make comments that cause concern with other ill informed people. The people reading or hearing them assume them to be true and the damage is done.
The beauty of syngas is that not only can it be used to generate electricity, but it can also be used as the basic building blocks for ultraclean diesel and jet fuel. This is where the real returns on this technology will be made as electricity generate minimal returns compared to liquid fuels.
We can create green fuels that are socially, economically and environmentally are better than biofuels while curing a major blight on our landscape. Whats more these fuels dont gel or cloud in cold weather, so have beeter properties for many North American cities andenvironments.
Longo bears an unnerving resemblance to the longtime cover boy of Mad magazine, http://www.crazypurchase.com
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This machine is very useful and can be use in every house, I hope that.
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Good review. I hope the syngas is environmentally safe. It is composed of mainly hydrogen and carbon monoxide.
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Good review. I hope the syngas is environmentally safe. It is composed of mainly hydrogen and carbon monoxide.
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Hi,
I am in the midst of producing a book, and I would like to use one of the images in this article. If someone could please get back to me regarding permissions for Pop Sci, that would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks a lot,
Jake Cox