All Your Green Blog

The city of Sacramento is considering using Plasma Gasification to dispose of their garbage. It's claimed that this high-tech incineration method will produce no toxic byproducts, and even produce more electricity than it consumes.

While this is possible, it entirely depends on the contents of the trash, but given generic residential waste, this claim might hold water. Considering their current solution is sending desiel-powered trash haulers up and over Donner Pass to the land fill daily, even breaking even on the electricity would be a vast improvement.

Basically, using lots of electricity and heat, trash is burned into its base components. The organic gases are burnable as fuel, and the metals and sandy materials are recyclable for other uses. Some of the concerns are the net energy usage (which could be very expensive if the waste is wet, or otherwise low in output energy), and buildup of chlorine gas. Modern facilities use high enough energy levels that the chlorine issue is almost entirely mitigated, however.

Three cheers for the world of tomorrow... today!

References:

• Sac Bee
• Wikipedia