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

[MJCronin]

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 (!!???)

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,213363,00.html

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-09-09-fla-county-trash_x.htm.

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

http://biowaste.blogspot.com/2007/01/geoplasma-answers-trash-vaporization.html

http://bioconversion.blogspot.com/2006/09/florida-county-to-vaporize-trash.html

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

 

[MJCronin]

Will this never die......?

Won't psychotic MBAs and middle-aged Project Managers with determined expressions ever learn simple thermodynamics ?

"InEnTec of Bend OR has partnered with Waste Management Inc. to build its trash-to-gas machines at landfills across the country. The result could be a renewable energy dream"

http://www.bendbulletin.com/apps/pb...102/906070301/1001/NEWS01&nav_category=NEWS01

I certainly understand that its a lot of fun to write a blog or newspaper and be hopefull about the future....but this whole thing is a hairsbreath away from a lie...

Comments Anyone ?

 

[TheTick]

Sometimes I wish I had the cojones to sell this sort of crap. Seems that dupes abound. Stupidity is out greatest economic resource!

 

[MJCronin]

A good summary of the industry status in many areas of the country.

http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/021209/loc_387242509.shtml

 

[MJCronin]

St. Lucie Plant....is now back on track,,,!!!!

But....uuummmmm........we are now going to generate only......ummmmm.....22MWe (maybe) and we are going to have to charge a fee for collecting your trash....

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2010/jan/08/plan-to-zap-trash-in-st-lucie-county-to-make-on/

We shall see..... in the meantime... It's important to note that this concept seems to have not taken kold in other parts of the world....????

 

[moltenmetal]

The Plasco guys in Ottawa are still going, apparently. There's nowhere I can see clear and unambiguous information about how much energy this plant makes, if any, versus how much it uses.

I went to Plasco's website and followed a link to an Ottawa Citizen article which Plasco titled "Ottawa support for Plasco".

A letter to the Ottawa Citizen by an anonymous poster (Jan. 19 2010) begs to differ, raising some very interesting adn troubling concerns not mentioned on Plasco's company website. It was posted in response to a columnist's suggestion that the local "green bin" organic waste diversion program will be too expensive and that Plasco is the answer. FYI, Rod Bryden is Plasco's "chief executive".

(letter quoted below verbatim)

The Truth about Plasco
January 19, 2010 - 11:38 PM
Randall Denley really needs to dig a little deeper when he's investigating Plasco Energy and not listen to Rod Bryden (Ottawa's biggest snake oil salesman).

1.) They have never been able to run their test facility for more than 4-5 days at a time. In order for serious Venture Capital money, Plasco would have to run their plant for 30 days to be viewed as a low risk investment.

2.) They have generated close to zero revenue from Power Generation since their facilitiy started. Plasco will tell you that they can run Engines from their Syngs but have they ever been able to run multiple engines at full 700 KW in order to produce more power than they use? No....

3.) They've spent millions of dollars in the last two years disposing of water that's so toxic, you couldn't sent it to the City's sewage treatment plant (where it was initially intended to go). They finally had to build a multi million dollar expansion water treatment plant to clean up their water partially.

Nobody actually wants to ask Rod Bryden the tough questions

1.) Why can't your plant generate power?

2.) How much money has the Pilot plant generated in Revenue in the two years?

3.) Why did you process create toxic water full of heavy metals and cyanides?

(end quote)

In the meantime, it appears that Red Deer, Alberta, is going to try this now too.

Will anybody other than potential Plasco investors look critically and technically at this process and determine if it really makes sense, both from a waste disposal AND energy generation perspective? I hope so, but so far I don't see it. What I see is politicians viewing landfilling as a serious NIMBYism problem which costs them votes, and hoping for the magical technological fix which will make this garbage all go away without the similarly NIMBY-phobic use of the word "incineration".

 

[MJCronin]

I guess the best way to keep this thread alive is to point out that the real subject is "plasma arc gasification" and include this string in a post.

Here we are.... a couple of years after the USAToday article about the massive plant planned in Florida

The plant was not built....the liars were exposed....the system works.

I guess that I have more faith in the the decision making process of municipal governments.....

-MJC