Although announced by Advanced Plasma Power in November 2007 and by Plasco Group in January 2008, the successful initiation of commercial operations for their full-scale 100 t/d modules has not been supported by publication of the practical achievement of positive results. A careful review of the facts reveals that each firm has encountered significant technical problems and obstacles during their attempts to scale up their small-scale units by a factor of 10 or more. These problems include high operation and maintenance costs, a variable composition syngas with low caloric value, and therefore difficulties with its combustion and conversion into electrical power. Moreover, all plasma gasification technologies are based on three main principles, which are: (1) the application of electrically inefficient, short-lived, high maintenance DC torches, or DC arcs, for plasma generation, (2) performing plasma gasification in air, and (3) syngas quenching by water. This results in a relatively low power efficiency (a low total export power generation of 0.8-1.1 MW per ton of MSW), a high internal power consumption (about 500 kW per ton plus power for auxiliary systems), and high facility operation costs - $70-80 per ton. These high costs make these processes technically and economically unfeasible, and ultimately impractical for wide implementation as a national, or global, waste management strategy.
Posted on: Thu, 13 Nov 2014 18:37:24 +0000
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