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Plasma trash "Zapper" - Florida - St. Lucie County 2

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MJCronin

MJCronin

Mechanical
Apr 9, 2001
5,087
To all,

It is my understanding that, since 2006, St. Lucie County in Florida is planning to build the "worlds largest" plasma based garbage/trash waste vaporization and power generation facility.

A company called "GEOPLASMA" is promising a $425+ million dollar - 160MWE(gross)facility; with 120 MWe available for sale to the grid.

3000 tons per day of trash will be consumed (!!???)




The main GEOPLASMA proponent of this plant is an Atlanta based developer and president of GEOPLASMA, Hilburn Hillestad; a former ecology/biology instructor.



County officials are smiling, non-technical people are pontificating, snarling lawyers and greedy developers are shaking hands and counting the money that they hope to soon make.....

Oh.....ummmm.....they don't seem to have an experienced engineering firm on board yet.....(!!??)

And....um...they seem to be claiming to be able to use the "low grade" heat generated by the plasma arcs as contributing to the generated megawattage of the plant.

(This is equivalent to claiming the heat expelled by cooling towers in a conventional power plant as available for generation !!!)

This new plasma zapper will be the largest in the world (by an order of magnitude !!). Smaller, demo plants have been built in Japan and Italy with limited sucess.

Anybody smell a rat ?

I do not believe that the plant will work, as advertised thermally and I believe that St. Lucie County and its moronic lawyers, consultants and MBAs are being blinded by "Greenness"

Does anyone else have doubts about this project..??

My opinion only..

-MJC
 
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See thread730-204617

This has been discussed a couple of times before here, but that thread is the most recent that I'm aware of.

Believe it if you need it or leave it if you dare. - [small]Robert Hunter[/small]
 
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"And....um...they seem to be claiming to be able to use the "low grade" heat generated by the plasma arcs as contributing to the generated megawattage of the plant."

Well, sure! They'll pipe steam to all the local homes so they can use it for heating. In Florida. Yeah.
 
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Wow... I wonder why no Engineering firm will touch this yet?!

V
 
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Take a look at my post on this from last year. For some reason I'm still mildly optimistic about it even though I'm pretty sure I shouldn't be.

There are a number of different companies doing basically the same thing. One of them does have some engineering pedigree.

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...
 
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Kenat,

10 years or so ago, the idea was a big one for disposal of hazardous waste, and the US Army looked into it for disposing of chemical weapons stocks. I tried googling for "chemical weapons plasma disposal", and could not find any info. about it on the military sites. Apparently the current methods used are straight thermal oxidation (incinerator) plants, with scrubbers on the exhaust stacks.

One site I found had a news brief from the "Concerned Citizens Against Chemical Weapons" or some such group, that described a trial of the plasma "burners" performed by the Army. Apparently, the process could not demonstrate control over the effluent gas, and would at times emit a variety of toxic gases (cyanide, dioxins...), even though the waste stream being processed wasn't anything particularly nasty, and the exhaust stream was being passed thru a "polishing" process.

Dunno if it's matured any.
 
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Well in the article I read one of the companies listed the US Army and I think Japan using it for just that purpose.

That could just be sales blurb though.

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...
 
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KENAT, et la....

To the best of my recollection...

For the past 8-12 years, there have been two small demo plants in Japan that use the plasma process to dispose of waste. Little electric power is generated.

The Japanese plants use a Westinghouse "torch", there others out there. The plants were built and supported by the Japanese government because of the trash crisis in the country and the difficult nature of the specific waste.

This plasma process consumes expensive electrodes and requires the containment, capture and compression of very hot and erosive gasses. (this does not sound cheap to me). There have been etensive long-term research programs dedicated to extending the life of these electrodes.

Along comes GEOPLASMA, and a busload of USAToday reporters...the largest Plasma-based trash disposal plant in the world will be now located in Florida, will be economic to run, meet all of Florida's enviornmental requirements and will make everybody tons of money, because it will be an economic success.......

um........ but..... there may be a few small engineering problems for someone to work out..... before we can reap all of the big money.

I am sure that there will be no problems with a technology that has been around for decades and the largest plant in the world that is trying to implement this technology...

Where are the Bechtel/Shaw/Jacoby and Fluor Engineers trumpeting such a plan ? Where are the conceptual plant drawings websites, cost studies etc.....!!??

My opinions and thoughts only..

-MJC

 
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Well all I'll say is that according to the article I read one of the companies that is creating one was founded by the guy that started the largest trash compactor company in the US.



So they have some Engineering pedigree.

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...
 
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Kenat, good links.

I remember the media rave about the incinerators in UK but it was eventually an embarassment.

There has to be a byproduct, right? Some sort of killer carcinogenic emission that needs to be managed. The physics and logistics of having the trash on the doorstep, backlogging, maintenance, downtime still not going to look pretty is it? Will be sized that it will beat the growing trash pile?


Robert Mote
 
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To all.....

We shall see.... The Plasco plant has only been producing power since late January.

This particlar plant burns the synthetic gasses in multiple GE Jenbacher IC engines, much like those IC engines long used to burn methane generated from landfills.

Oh, and by the way, any energy used "within the fence" to run cooling towers, gas compressors and the like does not count as energy used for "homes and businesses"

According to this website:
"January and February have been exciting months for PlascoEnergy at our Trail Road facility. On January 24th we received our first load of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) to the site. On February 7th we delivered our first power to Hydro Ottawa using MSW as our feedstock, this was accompanied by a visit from the Mayor of Ottawa and later on in the day the Mayor of Calgary."

Yup....mayors, governors, lawyers and other dignitaries have been by for a visit.

Ummmmmm... isn't this plant supplementing the "synthetic" gas generated with a stream of natural gas.....to stablize th heat value of the......of course........

Will there someday be an objective, definitive and scientific report generated describing the economic success (or failure) of this particular Canadian plant ?

Eh ?

-MJC
 
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Ohhh..

Check out this recent presentation......


Anybody have any comments about slide #12 ??? (which seems to be the only PFD available to date on this process)

Simple, little matters like designing waste-heat steam generators in corrosive atmospheres equipped with burners of truly unique design, seem to be of no major concern to the lawyers, developers, MBAs and project proponents ...... leave these details to the low-life subcontractors ... Bwaaahahahahah...!!

Oh yeah....those compressors necessary to feed hot, corrosive syngas to the "gas turbine"....has anyone ever made anything like this before..??? How much energy will they consume......?

Who will develop, design and test this first-of-a-kind "syngas" combustion turbine ? Is there another like it that exists in the world..??? (the answer, of course, is no...)

Tell me where I am wrong here......

-My opinion only

-MJC
 
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To all..

More interesting recent info from GEOPLASMA....


Look carefully at page # 12..

As I see it, there is a requirement for a HRSG upstream of the gas clean-up... the SYNGAS will be very corrosive

Compression of this corrosive mixture, but not CO2 and N2 removal is required.... anybody sense that this will be costly ?

Oh, and according to figures from Georgia tech, the generated SYNGAS will be very dilute and have a calorific value of only ~150 BTU/scf.

The best gas turbines on the market today require 250-300 BTU/scf (landfill gas applications)

Are these not significant technical issues that can only be solved by new research into new types of equipment ?

Does nobody else sense that we are witnessing an episode of "MBAs GONE WILD"....????

-MJC
 
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MJ, one of the other companines, the main subject of my original post, claimed to have some method for dealing with the Syngas if I recall correctly.

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...
 
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To all..

This long-delayed, "largest-of-it's-kind-in-the-world" plasma trash disposal plant has attracted the attention of the medical community:


Plans for a similar trash plant in Sacramento California, (US Science & Technology -not GEOPLASMA) are facing similar scrutiny:


-MJC
 
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mjcronin: I dug through Plasco's site (the company running the Ottawa demo) and suggest that you do the same as you seem really interested in this one- and report back. There appear to have been major additions to the site recently.

They no longer seem to mention the secondary (calorific) feed stream which I presumed was dry biosolids. They do mention that their feed waste contains up to "8% non-recyclable plastics otherwise destined to landfill"- that's a fair bit of fuel.

I didn't see a mention of the "vitreous solid product" (slag)'s properties (either test results or statements that it passes leachate toxicity tests), but I didn't have the time to look too hard. They have made major changes in equipment to their demo unit, some of which are on-going. Doesn't bode well for the much larger St. Lucie project that the other guys are planning- without the demo phase unless I've missed something...

Apparently, Red Deer Alberta is letting Plasco build a 300 T/d unit (I paraphrase) "as soon as the Ottawa demo unit shows promising energy efficiency, expected in early 2009". So it doesn't quite sound like they're there yet, but some folks are already lining up to let them have another, bigger crack at it.

They are apparently meeting their dioxin emission target from the Ontario government, but their dioxin emissions are definitely NOT zero. Just because they're using hot plasma doesn't mean that all the gas goes through the hot plasma I guess... They've exceeded on SO2 emissions and are apparently adding a sulphur removal step. And they run IC engines with the syngas, not turbines, so that's got to hurt the energy recovery efficiency a bit.

Better for the environment than aggressive recycling, organic composting and dry landfill? Maybe, if they can manage to off-set coal-fired generation by getting their energy efficiency up where they expect (hope) it to be, but probalby not- recycling and composting will get rid of too much of the feed's fuel value. Better than conventional incineration? That depends on how long the equipment functions without down-time etc.
 
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Personally I feel that trying to figure out what to do with our trash is a total waste of time and a step down the wrong path. Instead, the great minds of this world should be figuring out how to keep stuff out of the waste stream in the first place.
 
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to all...

Well, back last March I commented that plans to build the "worlds largest" plasma based garbage/trash waste vaporization and power generation facility seemed overblown and unwise.

The massive St Lucie plant would be the only one in the US and an order of magnitude bigger than any existing plasma based plant in the world. The estimated price was $450MM...

I noted that an Atlanta land developer and biologist was heading up the design and sales effort and was making, in my opinion, outlandish and extreme performance claims. This seemed odd...

I noted that no major architect-engineering firm was involved in the design, nor had there been any studies by major equipment suppliers for this unique one-of-a-kind plant. IMHO, extremely hot corrosive gasses required scrubbing and compression, a substantial engineering challenge.

Well guess what..... in late September, the same developer now wants to scale the plant back from 3000tpd to 200 tpd.

Read up....


What do you all think..???
 
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