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Selects: Please Listen to How Plasma Waste Convertors Work · Stuff You Should Know

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