The waste conversion process begins with any materials with high reclamation value being removed from the waste stream and collected for recycling. Once these high value products are removed, the MSW is shredded and any remaining materials are removed and sent for recycling.
The MSW stream enters the conversion chamber where the waste is converted into a crude syngas using recycled heat. The crude syngas that is produced flows to the refinement chamber where plasma torches are used to refine the gas into a cleaner syngas, known as PlascoSyngas.
Now refined, the PlascoSyngas is sent through a Gas Quality Control Suite to recover sulphur, remove acid gases and segregate heavy metals found in the waste stream. The result is a clean, energetic PlascoSyngas created from the conversion of waste with no air emissions.
PlascoSyngas is used to fuel internal combustion engines that efficiently generate electricity. Waste heat recovered from the engines is combined with waste heat recovered from cooling the PlascoSyngas in a Heat Recovery Steam Generation (HRSG) unit to produce steam. The steam can either be used to generate additional electricity using a turbine (combined cycle generation), or it can be used for industrial processes or district heating (cogeneration).
The solid residue from the conversion chamber is sent to a separate high temperature Carbon Recovery Vessel (CRV) equipped with a plasma torch where the solids are melted. Plasma heat is used to stabilize the solids and convert any remaining volatile compounds and fixed carbon into crude syngas. This additional crude syngas is fed back into the conversion chamber. Any remaining solids are then melted into a liquid slag and cooled into small slag pellets. The slag pellets are an inert vitrified residue sold as construction aggregate. Leachability tests have been conducted on slag emerging from the process and have confirmed that the slag does not leach and is non-toxic.
The entire process is continuously monitored by a proprietary control system that ensures sufficient PlascoSyngas stability to fuel internal combustion engines regardless of the variations in the energy content of the MSW.
The Plasco Conversion System is the only waste conversion technology that can generate more than
a megawatt-hour of net power per tonne of waste processed.
The Plasco Conversion System recovers the following from every tonne of waste converted:
