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Please Listen to How Plasma Waste Converters Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know from House Stuff Works
0:05
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey you welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
0:14
Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, guest producer. Noel is here.
0:18
Speaker 1: Noel's moved in. Yeah, so what that that cod is
0:22
Speaker 1: on the plan? He works constantly. Uh. You know what
0:27
Speaker 1: my superhero nickname was as a child. Uh, I'll tell
0:33
Speaker 1: you plasma Boy. No, it wasn't. I'm just kidding. That
0:38
Speaker 1: was a weird joke. Why we're talking about plasma Plasma boy? Yeah,
0:44
Speaker 1: like a radioactive man na plasma boy. Yeah, but it
0:49
Speaker 1: wasn't plasma boy. It was what was it? What was
0:52
Speaker 1: the Sidekicks name? Radioactive Man Sidekicks? Uh? Now I want
0:59
Speaker 1: to know, dude. Well, that's a band, I know, but
1:06
Speaker 1: I wonder if it's based on that maybe. I don't know.
1:10
Speaker 1: We'll find out, won't we. Well, we'll look it up
1:12
Speaker 1: and then we'll find out with a million emails. So, um,
1:15
Speaker 1: plasma boy. Huh. I wish you must have an affinity
1:20
Speaker 1: for this episode. Then it's great, Chuck. You know, when
1:23
Speaker 1: lightning strikes the earth, we did a pretty awesome podcast
1:28
Speaker 1: on lightning. Do you remember we talked about how it
1:31
Speaker 1: literally rips the sky open. It rips the atmosphere open,
1:38
Speaker 1: and as it's traveling down through this ripped open atmosphere,
1:41
Speaker 1: the air on either side of this stuff is superheated
1:44
Speaker 1: to about twenty thousand degrees. It's more than three times
1:48
Speaker 1: the surface temperature of the sun celsius. I should say celsius,
1:53
Speaker 1: not even fair enhog. It's about twelve grand celsius. Roughly,
1:57
Speaker 1: it's super hot, right, I'm sorry. Fare Kneite does a
2:00
Speaker 1: fare kneit. Yeah, twelve grand fare kneit. Yeah, Okay. At
2:05
Speaker 1: any rate degrees is lightning. And this when the air
2:10
Speaker 1: is superheated, it takes on what's commonly called the fourth
2:13
Speaker 1: state of matter, plasma. Right, so you've got solid, boring
2:19
Speaker 1: liquid gas. Awesome, Okay, but plasma is super awesome gas.
2:26
Speaker 1: It's it's a bit like a gas, and usually it
2:29
Speaker 1: starts out as a gas, but it it holds an
2:33
Speaker 1: electro magnetic field, or creates an electromagnetic field, and it
2:38
Speaker 1: holds an electrical charge. It has free roaming electrons. It's
2:41
Speaker 1: running through it doing all sorts of crazy stuff. It
2:44
Speaker 1: just basically breaks gas into like this, this crazy, weird
2:49
Speaker 1: different type of fluid and that's plasma and it's awesome
2:54
Speaker 1: ionized gas. Yes, pretty good stuff. Uh, super high tempts,
2:59
Speaker 1: like you are saying. And because it's a super high attempt,
3:03
Speaker 1: what it can do is it it can break down,
3:06
Speaker 1: it can it can it can cause something solid to
3:09
Speaker 1: undergo what's called molecular dissociation, which means it's not just
3:14
Speaker 1: burning something, it's not melting something. It's actually exposing it
3:19
Speaker 1: to so much heat that the molecular bonds break apart
3:23
Speaker 1: and it becomes a pile of its components and it
3:29
Speaker 1: breaks it down to from its compound of molecules to
3:33
Speaker 1: its atomic components. Yeah, pretty amazing. It is very amazing. UM.
3:38
Speaker 1: And it's like you said, it's not it's not UM
3:40
Speaker 1: burning Like this process of UM using a plasma torch
3:47
Speaker 1: to break something down to decompose it is actually what
3:50
Speaker 1: it's doing. UM doesn't even need to use oxygen nope. UM.
3:55
Speaker 1: So that means that it's a process called pyrolysis, which
4:00
Speaker 1: is intense, intense heat that creates decomposition in some sort
4:04
Speaker 1: of matter, especially organic matter, and UM. As a result,
4:07
Speaker 1: you get these byproducts. If it's a an organic piece
4:12
Speaker 1: of materials, say like some corn stalks that are using
4:15
Speaker 1: a biomass feedstock. Um, it will become something called sin gas. Right.
4:21
Speaker 1: And then if it's something like um old pair of
4:27
Speaker 1: roller skates, yeah, we'll save those. First of all, they're
4:32
Speaker 1: just not very good any longer. So the leather is
4:37
Speaker 1: was it at one point organic? I guess it would
4:39
Speaker 1: still be considered an organic material that turns into gas.
4:42
Speaker 1: The metal in the skates that will turn into something
4:47
Speaker 1: called slag, right, and it undergoes the process of vitrification, Yeah,
4:53
Speaker 1: it does. Vitrification is where this stuff becomes so the
4:58
Speaker 1: bombs break between it so thoroughly that it becomes basically
5:02
Speaker 1: a form of glass, yeah, like volcanic glass, almost at
5:06
Speaker 1: least what it looks like, Yeah, like obsidient. So all
5:10
Speaker 1: this sounds great. We're kind of beating around the bush
5:13
Speaker 1: about what a plasma torch can do. Um, And here's
5:18
Speaker 1: the big, the big bomb boom. Plasma torches can burn
5:23
Speaker 1: garbage and waste. Yes. And not only that, they can
5:27
Speaker 1: burn it without combustion, which means there's not a bunch
5:30
Speaker 1: of smoke. Yeah, and they can actually harvest the energy
5:35
Speaker 1: in that garbage in incredible ways because it turns out
5:40
Speaker 1: garbage is chock full of potential energy. You can release
5:45
Speaker 1: that energy when you burn it, like just regular incineration,
5:48
Speaker 1: but you only can maybe net about fift of the
5:53
Speaker 1: energy that's locked into this big pile of garbage in
5:56
Speaker 1: like a landfill, right, what a waste. With using a
5:59
Speaker 1: plast the torch to create pyrolysis or gasification, you can
6:04
Speaker 1: net up to eight of that energy that's locked in
6:08
Speaker 1: their potentially crazy into garbage. So what we're talking about
6:11
Speaker 1: is a potential future where we are using plasma torches
6:15
Speaker 1: to create energy to sell back to the grid, to
6:19
Speaker 1: create steam to turn those turbines, like we're always still
6:23
Speaker 1: just knocked out that that's how you create energy these days,
6:26
Speaker 1: I'm sorry electricity. Uh, and then sell off byproducts as
6:31
Speaker 1: well and make more money. Yes, it's it's like I
6:34
Speaker 1: cannot be more excited about this. And medical waste, chemical waste,
6:41
Speaker 1: throw it in there. In fact, you know what, so
6:44
Speaker 1: anything you got in their daddy, except for like radioactive material,
6:50
Speaker 1: you gotta you gotta swine flu outbreak. Take those pig carcasses,
6:54
Speaker 1: you throw them into the gasification chamber. There is no
6:59
Speaker 1: swine flu left. It is totally gone. Or how about this.
7:03
Speaker 1: I'll bring it to your farm. I'll have a small
7:05
Speaker 1: one set up. You got a swine food outbreak, I'll
7:07
Speaker 1: come to your farm and I'll burn up all those
7:10
Speaker 1: nasty pigs. You've got some toxic waste. Oh well, we'll
7:14
Speaker 1: just burn that in a gasification chamber and we'll break
7:18
Speaker 1: it down to its innert components. It's not gonna hurt anybody,
7:21
Speaker 1: no more, little lamb. I guess we keep saying burn. Well,
7:25
Speaker 1: it's really tough not to ye to see torch torch. Yeah. Nice,
7:31
Speaker 1: all right, So let's talk. Strickland wrote this, Jonathan Strickland
7:34
Speaker 1: of Tech Stuff, and he did a great job and
7:38
Speaker 1: he seemed to be as excited about it as we
7:41
Speaker 1: are when he was writing it, because how can you
7:43
Speaker 1: not be. Uh, Let's talk about some of the parts
7:47
Speaker 1: of these things. The first thing that he points out
7:49
Speaker 1: that we should point out is that um any plasma
7:54
Speaker 1: conversion gasification facility is gonna be unique to its own knee.
8:00
Speaker 1: They're all custom built at this point, there's no standardized unit.
8:04
Speaker 1: There are some companies that are starting to like westing
8:07
Speaker 1: House has some that you can just like what amounts
8:11
Speaker 1: to off the shelf. The backyard gasifier pretty much. Yeah,
8:15
Speaker 1: they I think they have like three different models, although
8:16
Speaker 1: I'm sure they will custom build you whatever you want.
8:19
Speaker 1: You're probably right. Uh But anyway, when he wrote this,
8:23
Speaker 1: they weren't super standardized, and that's good that we're going
8:25
Speaker 1: towards that. But um so what we're gonna talk about it,
8:28
Speaker 1: you know, sort of depends on the system. But what
8:31
Speaker 1: you're probably gonna have is conveyor belt that's gonna move
8:33
Speaker 1: the garbage into the converter. Yeah, it's gonna play that
8:37
Speaker 1: Bugs Bunny Powerhouse song. Oh man. Sometimes they will pre
8:42
Speaker 1: treat the stuff like although you could, if you had
8:45
Speaker 1: a big enough um machine, you could throw an entire
8:49
Speaker 1: car in it, let's say, but sometimes it's more efficient
8:52
Speaker 1: to break that car down and have a pilot, tires
8:54
Speaker 1: and a pile of scrap metal and break it down
8:57
Speaker 1: to its components, just to make it more efficient. Yeah,
8:59
Speaker 1: because it's gonna use a lot less energy to break
9:01
Speaker 1: it down into smaller parts and then feeded into the
9:05
Speaker 1: the plasma torch incinerator. Then it will to just torch
9:10
Speaker 1: it with the torch because these things use a lot
9:13
Speaker 1: of energy, a lot of energy. They probably saved that
9:17
Speaker 1: for when the investors come by right there like watching
9:21
Speaker 1: now you see it? Now you don't. Uh, you have
9:24
Speaker 1: your furnace, of course, and Strickland says, this is where
9:27
Speaker 1: the magic happens um because you don't need oxygen. It
9:30
Speaker 1: is air locked and airtight. Um junk goes in, but
9:36
Speaker 1: the heat doesn't escape into the atmosphere or the gases
9:39
Speaker 1: or the byproducts, which again that is really saying something
9:42
Speaker 1: about the material science that's gone into this, because these
9:46
Speaker 1: things are burning it like or heated to six thousand
9:49
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheigh again celsius, like the temperature of the sun
9:55
Speaker 1: in this little in this canister right here. It's amazing.
9:59
Speaker 1: I'm surprised plasma weapons for real. I think it's really
10:02
Speaker 1: great that they don't. I looked into it. It's like
10:05
Speaker 1: the realm of video games of course, like plasma guns
10:07
Speaker 1: and stuff. Uh So, if you have a furnace, which
10:12
Speaker 1: you will, you're gonna have the plasma torch, which is
10:15
Speaker 1: in the lower like half of the furnace, let's say.
10:18
Speaker 1: And they're also gonna have some drainage for that slag
10:20
Speaker 1: and some venting for the gas, and it's going to
10:23
Speaker 1: be water cooled. Yeah. One of the things that came
10:26
Speaker 1: across to me and this researching this is these things
10:30
Speaker 1: frequently have like really elegant designs. Right, So, like you
10:33
Speaker 1: have a drain for the slag, which again is the
10:35
Speaker 1: molten metal that's broken down to like it's constituent parts.
10:39
Speaker 1: It's inorganic material and depending on how you treat it
10:42
Speaker 1: will turn into glass or sand or nodules right asphalt um.
10:47
Speaker 1: And then you have the gas going up, but you
10:50
Speaker 1: also and you're draining off the slag, but you're also
10:53
Speaker 1: keeping some in because it forms basically a coke bed
10:57
Speaker 1: that keeps the furnace hot, which you have to use
11:00
Speaker 1: less energy in your in your plasma torch, just like
11:05
Speaker 1: having your own little lava bed just sort of sitting
11:07
Speaker 1: there up. So that's pretty cool, but eventually you're gonna
11:11
Speaker 1: probably want to get some of the slag out of
11:13
Speaker 1: there because you're gonna do cool things with it, which
11:15
Speaker 1: we'll talk about later. The plasma torch as themselves are clever,
11:18
Speaker 1: amazing little instruments. It's basically a uh it's a lightning creator,
11:26
Speaker 1: like they use an electrical arc. They push usually just
11:29
Speaker 1: plain old air through it so that this electric charge
11:33
Speaker 1: heats the air to these six thousand degrees, turns it
11:36
Speaker 1: into plasma and then that's what's directed into the furnace.
11:41
Speaker 1: It is very crazy, but that's that's what they're doing.
11:44
Speaker 1: It's a little water cooled torch that that gets super hot.
11:48
Speaker 1: Also doesn't use any kind of oxygen for combustion. Right.
11:52
Speaker 1: And also these things you want to turn me on
11:56
Speaker 1: with electrical stuff is show me a system that powers self,
12:01
Speaker 1: right that I just love that more than anything in
12:03
Speaker 1: these facilities, Um, I mean they've got they've got excess
12:08
Speaker 1: energy to spare afterwards, not only can they power themselves
12:11
Speaker 1: in a lot of cases, they're selling uh back to
12:14
Speaker 1: the grid. Right. So, once you've got this initial input
12:17
Speaker 1: where you get this thing going online and you heat
12:20
Speaker 1: that plasma torch up for the first time, the moment
12:23
Speaker 1: you start feeding feedstock into it, which in this case
12:26
Speaker 1: is garbage plain old municipal solid waste from their lands
12:29
Speaker 1: back to the future. Right, Um, Right, when you start
12:33
Speaker 1: feeding that, it starts to produce energy. And the way
12:36
Speaker 1: that it does that that gas that escapes sing Gaess,
12:40
Speaker 1: let's talk about sing gas, dude. Sincas is a beautiful, amazing,
12:44
Speaker 1: elegant thing. It has, it's combustible and it's untreated form,
12:50
Speaker 1: so you could use it to burn like natural gas,
12:52
Speaker 1: although it has about half the energy density of natural gas.
12:56
Speaker 1: But if you're burning um garbage, it's just basically free
13:00
Speaker 1: natural gas. The byproduct you can also treat it and
13:03
Speaker 1: scrub it and just release it into the atmosphere is
13:06
Speaker 1: innert gas. No problems with that water water scrubbed, right.
13:11
Speaker 1: But when the sing gas exits the furnace, it's it
13:17
Speaker 1: wants to expand. So if you're a very clever engineer,
13:20
Speaker 1: you'll put what's called the gas turbine right there. A
13:23
Speaker 1: gas turbine is spun by expanding gas. Well, you've got
13:27
Speaker 1: plenty of that stuff, right, So you've got the sing
13:29
Speaker 1: gas going through the gas turbine spinning that so it's
13:32
Speaker 1: a generating electricity. It's also very hot, so once it
13:36
Speaker 1: goes through that gas turbine, it can be caught by
13:39
Speaker 1: what's called a heat recovery steam generator, right, And that's
13:43
Speaker 1: just got some water going through it and it uses
13:44
Speaker 1: hot this hot heat gas to turn the water into steam. Well,
13:50
Speaker 1: that in turn turns another turbine. It generates even more electricity,
13:54
Speaker 1: and then at the end, before you even treat it,
13:56
Speaker 1: you have all the sin gas that could be used
13:58
Speaker 1: to fuel a austion engine to generate even more electricity,
14:03
Speaker 1: all from burning garbage. All right, we have to take
14:07
Speaker 1: a break because I have to peel Josh off the
14:09
Speaker 1: ceiling because you're so excited about sin gas. All right,
14:13
Speaker 1: we'll be back in a second. How you feeling, buddy,
14:39
Speaker 1: He okay, I'm so excited. This might as well be
14:43
Speaker 1: ocean currents. Oh yeah, you like that one too, huh.
14:47
Speaker 1: All right, so we're talking about sin gas. You need
14:49
Speaker 1: to scrub it with water. They passes through a spray
14:53
Speaker 1: of water. You're actually cleaning gas, which is pretty interesting
14:56
Speaker 1: as a concept. And then there are all measure of
14:58
Speaker 1: filters after word, to remove acids and things like that
15:04
Speaker 1: which do form weird byproducts like salts and salts. It's
15:09
Speaker 1: pretty neat. If you run it through a base scrubber,
15:11
Speaker 1: it turns into salts. But there again inert like just
15:14
Speaker 1: go ahead, pick up a handful and eat it. See
15:16
Speaker 1: what happens? Probably nothing. And if you use an afterburner,
15:20
Speaker 1: sometimes they'll use a secondary burner, uh, which is actually
15:24
Speaker 1: just natural gas flames. I guess to finish the job.
15:27
Speaker 1: Maybe yeah, to burn off like any particulate matter in
15:31
Speaker 1: the gas, like if the if them, the process didn't
15:37
Speaker 1: the sing gas isn't like pure this This basically burns
15:41
Speaker 1: off particular matter. Or you can scrub it too. And
15:44
Speaker 1: if you're doing all this, you're probably just going to
15:46
Speaker 1: release it rather than try to trap it and use
15:48
Speaker 1: it for combustion if you're gonna scrub it. But you
15:51
Speaker 1: do need to scrub it, especially if you're gonna release
15:53
Speaker 1: in the atmosphere, because it does contain some pretty nasty
15:56
Speaker 1: stuff cabium, mercury, a lot of heavy metals. Because remember
16:01
Speaker 1: what what this process does. The plasma torch and the
16:04
Speaker 1: gasification process breaks these things down into the their constituent
16:09
Speaker 1: um atoms and molecules and heavy metals and and um.
16:15
Speaker 1: Some other things are not really good for us, even
16:18
Speaker 1: in their most basic form. So for the most part,
16:20
Speaker 1: it's gonna take something that chemically speaking, was once a
16:25
Speaker 1: threat but has been broken down to its separate, innocuous
16:28
Speaker 1: in our components. Some things, even when they're at their
16:31
Speaker 1: most basic level, are still dangerous to us, like cadmium,
16:34
Speaker 1: like mercury, like other heavy metals, and these things do
16:37
Speaker 1: have to be taken out of the slag and or
16:41
Speaker 1: the sin gas and disposed of. The thing is is,
16:45
Speaker 1: if you put a thousand tons of municipal solid waste
16:48
Speaker 1: into one of these furnaces, you're only gonna get about
16:53
Speaker 1: twenty tons of that stuff. So so we will still
16:58
Speaker 1: need landfills or something like that, but it will just
17:00
Speaker 1: be for these very um dangerous chemicals are very dangerous,
17:04
Speaker 1: like heavy metals or something like that. But you still
17:07
Speaker 1: got great stuff out of the other nine times. Yeah, exactly.
17:13
Speaker 1: So the byproducts we talked about, the sing gash, the slag,
17:17
Speaker 1: and the heat are all used or not always used,
17:20
Speaker 1: depends on what you're trying to do with your plant,
17:22
Speaker 1: but they can potentially all be used. And the slag,
17:27
Speaker 1: I think you already said you're getting. So that means
17:29
Speaker 1: the weight of your resulting slag is only of what
17:33
Speaker 1: you started with. So you took that buick, uh, and
17:37
Speaker 1: it now weighs what it formally weighed. You could pick
17:41
Speaker 1: it up if you wanted, Yeah, maybe, so, probably should
17:44
Speaker 1: wait for it to cool down. And the volume is
17:47
Speaker 1: only about five percent of the original waste volume. Uh.
17:50
Speaker 1: And like you said, it looks like volcanic glass, and
17:53
Speaker 1: they can use it in asphalt and concrete. They can
17:56
Speaker 1: pour it directly into molds and make paper stones, and
18:00
Speaker 1: it's all of a sudden, it's a it's a it's
18:03
Speaker 1: something that you would find at your Big Bucks hardware
18:06
Speaker 1: store for your garden, which is pretty amazing. Another UM
18:09
Speaker 1: potential creation that you can use slag for is to
18:12
Speaker 1: turn into rock wool. Man, I love this stuff right like,
18:16
Speaker 1: so as the smolten slag is coming out, if you
18:18
Speaker 1: expose it to compressed air blasts, it turns into this
18:22
Speaker 1: thready very light but also very strong wool type material
18:27
Speaker 1: like gray cotton candy. Is how um how Strickland puts it.
18:31
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of uses for it, Like you
18:33
Speaker 1: can use it in hydroponics. It's a it's a growing medium. UM.
18:38
Speaker 1: You can also use it as insulation. Apparently it has
18:41
Speaker 1: twice the insulating properties of UM fibery last. Yeah, it
18:47
Speaker 1: is UM and you can also use the clean up
18:50
Speaker 1: oil spills. That says, Yeah, this is the one that
18:52
Speaker 1: really gets me going. It's lighter than water, so you
18:54
Speaker 1: can just throw it on water and it'll sit there
18:57
Speaker 1: and it's super absorbent, so it'll basicly, what they'll probably
19:02
Speaker 1: do is contain it in something like a tube or
19:05
Speaker 1: something and then just throw that tube in a big
19:08
Speaker 1: circle around an oil spill. It'll float on the water
19:11
Speaker 1: soak up the oil. Um, you just go back and
19:14
Speaker 1: scoop up the Rockwell, yeah, I guess. So. I had
19:18
Speaker 1: a friend that used to work and um, I need
19:21
Speaker 1: to look that up and him up actually, because I
19:23
Speaker 1: don't know where it went. But they were using banana
19:26
Speaker 1: fibers to do the same thing to clean up oil spills.
19:31
Speaker 1: Didn't we do one on oil spills? And like your friend,
19:34
Speaker 1: you emailed with them or something like that about it.
19:37
Speaker 1: I don't know, I feel like we did. It seems
19:38
Speaker 1: like the distant past. But here's the cool thing about
19:41
Speaker 1: the the rock will they currently use it. It's not
19:45
Speaker 1: just something that you can only get as a byproduct
19:48
Speaker 1: of creating the sin gas. It is produced by mining rocks.
19:53
Speaker 1: You melt it down and then spin it sort of
19:55
Speaker 1: like cotton candy, like you said, in a big machine.
19:59
Speaker 1: And here's the cool thing about the gasification though. The
20:02
Speaker 1: way they make the rock will now it's about ten
20:05
Speaker 1: cents I'm sorry about a dollar a pound as a
20:08
Speaker 1: byproduct That could be sold for ten cents a pound plus.
20:11
Speaker 1: You don't have all of the um the disturbances in
20:15
Speaker 1: the earth of mining rocks to turning the rock will
20:18
Speaker 1: it's a byproduct of garbage that you're burning. That's great,
20:21
Speaker 1: it's amazing. This is like when win win win win,
20:25
Speaker 1: win win win. The slag is not leachable. That's another
20:29
Speaker 1: cool thing that I found too. So Strickland specifically said,
20:32
Speaker 1: you can't do this with radioactive material. I have seen
20:35
Speaker 1: that you can. Yeah, And what you can do is
20:40
Speaker 1: it'll turn it into the slag the subsidian glass, and
20:44
Speaker 1: while it's still radioactive, it's not going anywhere. It's not
20:48
Speaker 1: going to leach out into the soil, and it shall.
20:51
Speaker 1: It should be stable like this for thousands of years,
20:54
Speaker 1: conceivably until the radioactivity is not harmful the humans any longer.
20:59
Speaker 1: It would be a really great You can just turn
21:01
Speaker 1: it into these radioactive paver stones that yeah, that might
21:06
Speaker 1: even glow at night. You'd have a nice little path
21:08
Speaker 1: in your backyard and they'll glow. There's actually glass like that.
21:12
Speaker 1: I can't remember what it's technical term is, but in
21:16
Speaker 1: the mid twentieth century there was a big trend for
21:20
Speaker 1: radio They called it vasoline glass because it glowed about
21:24
Speaker 1: the color of vasoline, which is weird. But you can
21:27
Speaker 1: find cut glass like ashtrays and sculptures that glow, and
21:30
Speaker 1: the reason they glow because they're radioactive. I think, I
21:34
Speaker 1: know what you're talking about, really neat looking, but it's
21:36
Speaker 1: also like, I don't know if that should be in
21:38
Speaker 1: my home. I would like your own cigarette holds. All right. Uh, well,
21:44
Speaker 1: let's take another break here and we'll talk about where
21:47
Speaker 1: we are now and where we could be headed with gasification.
22:13
Speaker 1: All right, So here's what I've found in this might
22:17
Speaker 1: not even be current. What I saw was that they're
22:20
Speaker 1: currently eight functioning plasma gasification facilities in the world. That's
22:27
Speaker 1: that sounds about right. One in Taiwan, when in Japan,
22:30
Speaker 1: one in Canada, when in England, one here in the USA.
22:33
Speaker 1: Where's the one in the US? Uh think Vero Beach, Florida.
22:37
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, um, one in India, one in China, and
22:40
Speaker 1: get this one, there's one on an aircraft carrier that
22:44
Speaker 1: the US is using. The idea is that it's a
22:49
Speaker 1: little small unit that basically just treats the on board waste.
22:55
Speaker 1: So they envisioned the future where like cruise ships have
22:58
Speaker 1: these things, and they don't have just dump all their
23:01
Speaker 1: garbage in the ocean, while there's exactly you treat all
23:04
Speaker 1: the waste, and I guess they could even sell buy
23:06
Speaker 1: products that they wanted to. UM. There's one that's supposedly going.
23:12
Speaker 1: I know you saw it was mothballed, right, But there's
23:15
Speaker 1: one that's that's playing. They have like all the I
23:18
Speaker 1: guess the UM licenses and certifications that they need to
23:22
Speaker 1: build one in Port St. Lucy, Florida. And it's supposedly
23:27
Speaker 1: it started out um as it was going to take
23:30
Speaker 1: on a thousand tons of garbage a day and put
23:33
Speaker 1: out UM third, it was gonna generate sixty seven megawatt
23:38
Speaker 1: hours a day and sell thirty three of that, so
23:43
Speaker 1: it would completely power its own operations and still have
23:46
Speaker 1: thirty three megawatt hours to put out, like to sell
23:49
Speaker 1: back to the grid. It's just more money that this
23:52
Speaker 1: thing is making, right, UM. What I saw is that,
23:55
Speaker 1: and I think it was like two thousand, fourteen UM.
23:58
Speaker 1: It said that it was going to be about six
24:01
Speaker 1: of that, so it would take in about six hundred
24:03
Speaker 1: tons of garbage and generate a total output of twenty
24:07
Speaker 1: two mega OTTs um but yeah, I don't know if
24:12
Speaker 1: it's coming or not. But either way, the thing that
24:15
Speaker 1: got me about this one, chuck, was that they planned
24:18
Speaker 1: to not just accept landfill waste, but to go out
24:22
Speaker 1: and mind existing landfills and use those things as feedstock.
24:27
Speaker 1: And in fact, there was one in um uh Uashinai,
24:32
Speaker 1: Japan that closed down because they ran out of feedstock.
24:35
Speaker 1: They burned through all the garbage. Wo. Yeah, that's pretty
24:39
Speaker 1: great when you're out of garbage exactly. They'll stop earlier
24:45
Speaker 1: this year, I think um the world's largest plant um is.
24:49
Speaker 1: They said it was near completion in May, so it
24:50
Speaker 1: may be done at this point. But a company called
24:53
Speaker 1: Air Products UM began processing three d and fifty thou
24:58
Speaker 1: tons at this facility, creating power. Wow wait during tons. Yeah,
25:05
Speaker 1: it's had enough powered for homes and uh fifty full
25:10
Speaker 1: time jobs, which is not that many, not for that much,
25:14
Speaker 1: but no, which is highly automated, I would guess, yeah,
25:16
Speaker 1: which is sort of good in a way. Um, but
25:19
Speaker 1: I guess you'd want more jobs created to this is
25:22
Speaker 1: sort of a balancing acting, guess. Uh. And it costs
25:25
Speaker 1: half a billion, five million dollars um and that is
25:30
Speaker 1: one of the that's one of the stumbling blocks along
25:33
Speaker 1: the way. Strickland points out that anytime you have a
25:35
Speaker 1: new technology, it's gonna be super expensive to get going.
25:38
Speaker 1: And everyone's dug in on the landfill and how we're
25:41
Speaker 1: doing things now, so it's gonna take a lot. It'll
25:44
Speaker 1: get cheaper over time like everything else. That's a new
25:48
Speaker 1: new way of doing things. And you also have to
25:50
Speaker 1: win over the establishment with with dollars. You have to
25:54
Speaker 1: show them why it'll be better for them financially. Well. Yeah. Also,
25:58
Speaker 1: if if say a municipality is kind of like, well,
26:02
Speaker 1: we're not gonna close down the landfill, but if you
26:05
Speaker 1: guys want to open one, go ahead. Well then you
26:07
Speaker 1: have a plasma waste treatment facility and a landfill in
26:12
Speaker 1: direct competition. And if you are their customer, meaning you
26:16
Speaker 1: have some garbage that you want to take, you don't
26:18
Speaker 1: care where your garbage is going, probably you want to
26:21
Speaker 1: go to whoever has the cheaper fees for accepting that garbage.
26:25
Speaker 1: Because a landfill is kind of an expensive proposition. They're
26:29
Speaker 1: tipping fees are going to be high. It's basically the
26:31
Speaker 1: only way they can make money if by charging people
26:34
Speaker 1: to deposit their garbage with a plasma waste treatment facility,
26:39
Speaker 1: They're making money all over the place. They're selling slag
26:42
Speaker 1: as paper stuff, they're selling rockwell to clean up oil spills,
26:47
Speaker 1: they're selling electricity back to the grid. So they're making
26:50
Speaker 1: money in all these other ways that can pay for
26:52
Speaker 1: the operation and generate a profit so they could keep
26:55
Speaker 1: their tipping fees low. So if you own a landfill
26:58
Speaker 1: and somebody opens a plasma waste tream facility in the
27:00
Speaker 1: same city, you may be in a bit of trouble
27:03
Speaker 1: business wise. Yeah, keep the tipping philo and uh and
27:07
Speaker 1: not just people like municipalities will begin using your services ultimately,
27:11
Speaker 1: because I think the one thing that's lacking still is
27:14
Speaker 1: that environmental will right, And we're definitely a lot further
27:18
Speaker 1: along than we were when Strickland wrote this article. But
27:22
Speaker 1: I think that that that's one of the things that
27:23
Speaker 1: makes it so attractive is we're gonna burn your garbage
27:27
Speaker 1: and really really green sustainable ways create energy from it.
27:31
Speaker 1: And we're gonna go get your old garbage and burn
27:34
Speaker 1: that too and make even more electricity, and the plant's
27:38
Speaker 1: gonna power itself with your garbage. It's it's a win
27:41
Speaker 1: win win win Win Win So Strickland interviewed, Um he
27:48
Speaker 1: was from Georgia Tech, right, a doctor Cisero. I'm sorry
27:52
Speaker 1: cerci Cercio. Oh I thought it was Cistero too. Yeah,
27:56
Speaker 1: it's a mine trick are before? See? Um? So Dr
28:01
Speaker 1: Cercio said he envisions a future where you don't just
28:05
Speaker 1: have like the big municipality plant, Like that'd be great
28:08
Speaker 1: and all. Maybe you could bring a plasma torch to
28:12
Speaker 1: a landfill and just bore a hole through it and
28:16
Speaker 1: stick that plasma torch in there, cap it off, and
28:19
Speaker 1: start burning that junk from the inside out. Yeah, but
28:22
Speaker 1: I feel like, well, whoa, whoa, there could be a
28:24
Speaker 1: coal steam nearby. What about what I thought? What about? Like,
28:27
Speaker 1: uh what Centralia, Pennsylvania. Right, Centralia, Pennsylvania caught fire. There's
28:35
Speaker 1: a combustion fire going on. If any coal steam was
28:39
Speaker 1: exposed to this, it would it would just be decomposed
28:42
Speaker 1: into carbon into its constituents. It wouldn't catch fire. That's
28:46
Speaker 1: nothing to do with this again. So it's actually extremely
28:50
Speaker 1: safe and the landfill itself would act as the furnace.
28:54
Speaker 1: That's amazing, isn't it. Like it's really tough to think of,
28:57
Speaker 1: really intense heat without thinking fire. But that that is
29:02
Speaker 1: not where this goes. Uh or Dr Sir Sero cercio
29:10
Speaker 1: Ceo says, hey, why not work together here and bring
29:17
Speaker 1: a plasma converter to another existing traditional facility where they
29:23
Speaker 1: can work hand in hand, like a coal fire power plant. Yeah,
29:25
Speaker 1: why not? So what this would do is you would
29:28
Speaker 1: just basically stick a plasma facility onto it into the
29:32
Speaker 1: existing infrastructure and just accept garbage in there and burn
29:36
Speaker 1: that and everything, and then the sin gas that's created
29:39
Speaker 1: would be used to help fire the coal fire plants.
29:43
Speaker 1: Then it would be used for combustion, right, and you
29:46
Speaker 1: would be using less coal or less fossil fuels to
29:49
Speaker 1: UM do the same thing to create steam to spin
29:52
Speaker 1: the turbine, because ultimately that's what it all comes down
29:55
Speaker 1: to with electricity. So if you have a UM a
29:59
Speaker 1: green way to supplement the stuff, all you're doing is
30:02
Speaker 1: using less fossil fuel too. It's also way cheaper because
30:06
Speaker 1: then you're not having to treat the sin gas, which
30:09
Speaker 1: apparently is half the cost of a plasma treatment facili
30:13
Speaker 1: because these guys have to treat the escaping smoke and
30:16
Speaker 1: everything anyway. So all you're doing is adding actually a
30:19
Speaker 1: cleaner um, a cleaner fuel into the fire. It's going
30:23
Speaker 1: to ultimately be cleaned down the line. Amazing. And then
30:27
Speaker 1: we talked about um sort of half joking, but they're
30:30
Speaker 1: serious about decontamination. You know, if you have an outbreak
30:34
Speaker 1: on your farm and you have a bunch of uh,
30:37
Speaker 1: you know, sad. But if you have a bunch of sick,
30:40
Speaker 1: disease dead livestock, just bring out the h the P
30:45
Speaker 1: three thousand, throw those cows in there, bing bang boom. Yeah,
30:50
Speaker 1: maybe grind them up first two yeah, why not? Um? Yeah,
30:54
Speaker 1: and you can do that with soil as well. Contaminated soil,
30:57
Speaker 1: got an e. Coli outbreak and your spinach field not anymore,
31:02
Speaker 1: But the dirty humans not anymore. Storm in there, medical
31:05
Speaker 1: waste to biohezard. Nope, you've got inert stuff, poopy cruise ship,
31:11
Speaker 1: the whole thing in there at once. I'm kidding about
31:14
Speaker 1: dirty humans. By the way, why do I didn't even
31:17
Speaker 1: need to say that. I don't think so. I hope not.
31:22
Speaker 1: You never know, buddy. So that is plasma waste treatment,
31:26
Speaker 1: hopefully the wave of the future. Yeah, we should title
31:29
Speaker 1: this something a little sexier so people aren't like Yeah,
31:32
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people because that should Yeah, because
31:36
Speaker 1: then like even people that are super into like green
31:39
Speaker 1: technologies will probably be like, I want to learn about
31:41
Speaker 1: this weird science thing. Yeah, how about plasma waste treatment?
31:46
Speaker 1: Please listen, Signed Josh and Chuck. Yeah, I like it.
31:50
Speaker 1: It's a little clumsy, will work on it. If you
31:53
Speaker 1: want to know more about plasma treatment facilities or any
31:56
Speaker 1: of that stuff, you can take those words in the
31:58
Speaker 1: search bar at how of words dot com. And since
32:01
Speaker 1: Chuck said sexy, it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna
32:07
Speaker 1: call this you guys got Africa right. Thank you, Hey guys,
32:11
Speaker 1: listen to your podcast about female puberty and was very
32:13
Speaker 1: impressed with the thoughtfulness and sensitivity in which you explain
32:16
Speaker 1: things and gave advice. Um, by the way, we heard
32:20
Speaker 1: from a lot of people on that, and thank you.
32:23
Speaker 1: A lot of young women, a lot of grown women,
32:25
Speaker 1: a lot of men, and Dad's uh, and that one
32:28
Speaker 1: meant a lot. It was really good to get that
32:30
Speaker 1: one right, I think. Um. The one thing that we
32:32
Speaker 1: didn't quite get right that someone has pointed out more
32:35
Speaker 1: than a few times is uh, we said boy crazy
32:39
Speaker 1: a lot and we should have gone out of our
32:40
Speaker 1: way to say, like, you know, you might also be
32:43
Speaker 1: girl crazy or you might not have sexual feelings and thoughts.
32:47
Speaker 1: I wish we had that one back. I know. That's
32:50
Speaker 1: you know, I'm giving us a break on that because
32:52
Speaker 1: we people know how we feel about that stuff. We
32:55
Speaker 1: just didn't pointed out as strongly as we should have.
32:58
Speaker 1: But that's I mean, that's how things change and improved
33:00
Speaker 1: those you know what we're saying that now, young young
33:03
Speaker 1: ladies out there going through puberty, you might like other girls,
33:07
Speaker 1: you might not like boys or girls. Uh And all
33:10
Speaker 1: that's okay too, Yes, all right, thanks for saying that.
33:14
Speaker 1: So back to this, probably listen to about two hundred
33:16
Speaker 1: or more of your podcasts, man, you get a long
33:18
Speaker 1: way to go, buddy. Uh. And I'm always like, I'm
33:20
Speaker 1: almost the three oh one, only five after that. I'm
33:25
Speaker 1: always happy to hear you. Guys, do your best to
33:26
Speaker 1: be specific when you make references to events in countries
33:30
Speaker 1: or geographic regions. What I mean by this is you
33:33
Speaker 1: don't generalize like a lot of people do and say crap,
33:36
Speaker 1: like in Africa they blah blah blah, or in Europe
33:39
Speaker 1: it's normal to blah blah blah when you got to
33:42
Speaker 1: the part of your latest show where you talk about
33:43
Speaker 1: female puberty rights. Was elated to hear you being careful
33:46
Speaker 1: enough to say, in Ghana, there is a village where
33:49
Speaker 1: dot dot dot. The reason for my reaction is that
33:52
Speaker 1: I've lived in the US for twenty years, but I'm
33:54
Speaker 1: from Ghana. There at least twenty distinct ethnic groups and
33:57
Speaker 1: languages in Ghana alone, and I know for a fact
34:00
Speaker 1: that the ritual you described is not done in all
34:01
Speaker 1: of them. In fact, I've heard of it, but I
34:03
Speaker 1: don't think it happens anymore. By the way, the official
34:06
Speaker 1: language in Ghana is English, so we are able to
34:09
Speaker 1: communicate with each other. Nothing irritates US Africans more than
34:14
Speaker 1: to hear someone started sentence within Africa. I bet it's
34:19
Speaker 1: continent that huge, because no one says, well, in North America, no,
34:24
Speaker 1: but they just say, like in the US, but at
34:26
Speaker 1: least it's a confederation of like associated states. In Africa,
34:30
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, you're you're putting the whole continent, and
34:33
Speaker 1: it's all these different countries with all these different cultures. Yeah,
34:36
Speaker 1: it's amazing. So thanks guys for being so thoughtful and professional.
34:40
Speaker 1: Eric from Seattle by way of Ghana. I guess yeah,
34:44
Speaker 1: thanks a lot. Eric appreciate that. Thank you agreed. If
34:48
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us, whether to
34:50
Speaker 1: give us big ups or pooh pooh us or um,
34:55
Speaker 1: submit some sort of neutral statement that's a fact based
34:59
Speaker 1: who knows, we get a lot. Yeah. You can tweet
35:02
Speaker 1: to us at s Y s K podcast. You can
35:04
Speaker 1: join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know.
35:07
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35:09
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com and has always joined us
35:12
Speaker 1: at our home on the web, Stuff you should Know
35:14
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35:22
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