Demonstration of thermal plasma gasification/vitrification for municipal solid waste treatment.
Thermal plasma treatment has been regarded as a viable alternative for the treatment of highly toxic wastes, such as incinerator residues, radioactive wastes, and medical wastes. Therefore, a gasification/vitrification unit for the direct treatment of municipal solid waste (MSW), with a capacity of 10 tons/day, was developed using an integrated furnace equipped with two nontransferred thermal plasma torches. The overall process, as well as the analysis of byproducts and energy balance, has been presented in this paper to assess the performance of this technology. It was successfully demonstrated that the thermal plasma process converted MSW into innocuous slag, with much lower levels of environmental air pollutant emissions and the syngas having a utility value as energy sources (287 Nm3/MSW-ton for H2 and 395 Nm3/MSW-ton for CO), using 1.14 MWh/MSW-ton of electricity (thermal plasma torch (0.817 MWh/MSW-ton)+utilities (0.322 MWh/MSW-ton)) and 7.37 Nm3/MSW-ton of liquefied petroleum gas.
Byun
Youngchul
Y
School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), San 31 Hyoja-dong Nam-gu Pohang 790-600, Republic of Korea.
Namkung
Won
W
Cho
Moohyun
M
Chung
Jae Woo
JW
Kim
Young-Suk
YS
Lee
Jin-Ho
JH
Lee
Carg-Ro
CR
Hwang
Soon-Mo
SM
D002947:Cities; D058626:Plasma Gases / Q000737:chemistry*; D012037:Refuse Disposal / Q000379:methods*; D056910:Republic of Korea; D013696:Temperature; D058989:Vitrification
D058626:Plasma Gases