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Plasma Converters!
croxis
I am the walrus
in Zocalo v2.0
[url]http://www.sliceofscifi.com/2007/02/18/sci-fi-to-sci-fact-plasma-converter/[/url]
Comments
It had to be said.
Don't quite understand how its going to be very useful as an energy generating device given it seems like it requires some pretty high energy consumption simply to operate.
Why reduce a banana peel into carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen, when you can mix it with a few microbes and bacteria to produce the perfect plant food? To take the basic elements and produce a fertilizer of the same effectiveness takes more energy than you get from breaking it down in the first place.
Technically cool, but not very useful for most trash.
You built a time machine? From a DELORIAN???
Jake
"Mon Capitaine..." :D
Though, you guys should read the full article here: [URL="http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/873aae7bf86c0110vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html"]Popular Science[/URL]
Don't quite understand how its going to be very useful as an energy generating device given it seems like it requires some pretty high energy consumption simply to operate.[/QUOTE]
Read the article again, it says right in there that they use most of the byproduct syngas the process creates to run the machine. All they need is the initial jolt of electrical energy to start the process and after that it runs itself, leaving a surplus of even that can be used to run heating and cooling systems for the rest of the building! So it gets rid of trash, creates two helpful and easily usable byproducts, and runs itself off of them. I'd say that's pretty frakkin awesome! Like the full article says, it sounds too good to be true, but it works.
Let's say that 1 MJ of energy went into making 100 tonnes of garbage. Then using this process you are able to recover 1/3 of that energy (according to the article about 2/3 of the energy produced is required to operate the machine). That means we have a ratio of .6 of energy in versus energy out, that is only a slightly better energy balance than corn ethanol. Of course, you do have the added benefit of getting some utility from the consumption of the products before the become garbage [i]and[/i] stopping the flow of mass that today just ends in a landfill.
Something this technology should also be compared with is recovering the methane from landfills, looking at the energy balance and investment required in that source.
Jake
Though I'm curious as to whether or not it would be possible to harvest raw heavy metals from these leftovers. People still want mobile phones and computers, and this requires cobalt, platinum, etc.
Though I'm curious as to whether or not it would be possible to harvest raw heavy metals from these leftovers. People still want mobile phones and computers, and this requires cobalt, platinum, etc.[/QUOTE]
They don't have to dump any of it, according to the article.
"The by-products are an obsidian-like glass used as a raw material for numerous applications, including bathroom tiles and high-strength asphalt..."