| You basically correctly identified the main reasons plasma gasification has not been viable and why it won’t be viable until these issues are resolved. My inquiry basically amounts to whether anyone is working on these problems. There was a big push 10-20 years ago, but it seems people have given up. There is plenty of land for landfills, but nobody wants them nearby. The bigger problem, however, is that in the long run, the encapsulations will all fail. It’s not a matter of if; it’s a matter of when. Until then, there are ongoing maintenance costs (such as mowing because you can’t let trees get root) that can add up quickly. Someone has to work on this technology because it will eventually be needed for remediations (it already is needed for old, unlined landfills). It needs to capture the high-value metals (as you mentioned) and it needs to be economical in terms of initial capital costs as well as being at least energy neutral. It doesn’t necessarily have to produce net energy since it can generate revenue the same way a landfill does (tipping fees), but it would be nice to at least get close to energy break even. Anyway, I guess people have given up on this problem for now, sadly. |
http://energy.cleartheair.org.hk/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/...
which I see as pessimistic. Although the plasma torch is using a fraction of the energy output, they are blasting oxygen or air into the reactor so pyrolysis is driven by combustion as well. The reactor is not breaking down dioxins so those need to be stripped. From an air pollution quality it looks acceptable but not great. Heterogenous feedstocks will confound the thing.
This gasification facility is in a class by itself,
https://www.netl.doe.gov/research/Coal/energy-systems/gasifi...
it was not able to pay for its capital costs but after a bail out it has been highly successfully at paying its operations costs. It is highly optimized and it is not just selling natural gas but also nitrogen fertilizer (uses the nitrogen from the liquid air factory that makes oxygen for the blast) and coal tar products and even waste CO2. It has a huge coal seam across the street so it is always consuming the same stuff so the preprocessing and cleanup are all standardized. It was “too big to fail” so people did stay the course and get it spinning like a top.