title: Demonstration of thermal plasma gasification/vitrification for municipal solid waste treatment.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: 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.
authors.forename: Youngchul
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Byun
authors.forename: Won
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Namkung
authors.forename: Moohyun
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cho
authors.forename: Jae Woo
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Chung
authors.forename: Young-Suk
authors.initials: YS
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Jin-Ho
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Carg-Ro
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Soon-Mo
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Hwang
mesh_terms: D002947:Cities; D058626:Plasma Gases / Q000737:chemistry*; D012037:Refuse Disposal / Q000379:methods*; D056910:Republic of Korea; D013696:Temperature; D058989:Vitrification
chemical_list: D058626:Plasma Gases