Atlanta firm will turn trash into energy in Florida

Harnessing the power of trash
Thursday, August 02, 2007
Michael Sangiacomo
Plain Dealer Reporter
It turns out the trash-burning DeLorean in “Back to the Future” may not be so far-fetched after all.

A company called GeoPlasma of Atlanta will finance, build and operate the first plant in the country to use a 10,000-degree plasma flame to turn household trash into electricity.

When fully operational, the plant in St. Lucie County, Fla., will vaporize 3,000 tons of waste a day.

The process, called plasma torch gasification, produces a burnable gas substitute called syngas that powers a turbine to pump enough energy back into the electric grid to run the plant and 75,000 homes daily. That’s enough to keep all the homes in a community about the size of Akron running completely on electricity created from refuse.

“It’s like bottled lightning, temperatures hotter than the sun,” said company President Hilburn Hillestad. “We can gasify anything. Any kind of household or construction materials including rocks and dirt can be used. We can even take sewage sludge and hospital waste and turn it into an inert slag.”

Environmentalists and garbage-clogged cities like New York are looking to Florida for a way to eliminate the nation’s trash problem and produce electricity. But using trash for energy could threaten states such as Ohio that cash in on storing others’ garbage.

Earl Scime, chairman of the physics department at West Virginia University, said high-temperature plasma torches break down toxic substances into more manageable forms. Like everyone else, he’s eager to see the plant when it begins operation in 2010.

“I don’t know the economics of it,” Scime said. “If they can pull it off and reduce waste in landfills and keep waste out of the ecosystem, it will be very impressive.”

State to monitor plant safety

Bill Haynes, GeoPlasma’s chief technical officer, said the process has been slowed a bit because everyone wants assurances of the plant’s safety. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection approved the plans, said Ron Roberts, assistant director of the St. Lucie County Department of Solid Waste.