March 13, 2021 • 36 mins
There is a way to not only sustainably get rid of our household waste, but also produce enough energy from it to power the process and even create electricity for the grid. The future is here. Learn all about it in this classic episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey there, it's Josh and for this week's s Y
s K selects, I've chosen please listen to How Plasma
Waste Converters Work. It is one of those unsung sleeper
episodes that may prove to be one of the greatest
Stuff You Should Know episodes of all time. It talks
about technology we had never heard of until we came
across it and started researching it, and still to this day,
(00:22):
five full years later, it is just as mind blowing
to me as when I first heard about it. So
check out. Please listen to how Plasma waste Converters work.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
(00:48):
Just Charles W. Chuck Bryant, guest producer Noel is here.
Noel's moved in. Yeah, yeah, so what that that cod
is on the floor. He works constantly. Uh you know
what my superhero nickname was as a child. Uh, I'll
tell you Plasma Boy. No it wasn't. Yeah, I'm just kidding.
(01:12):
That was a weird joke. Why we're talking about plasma
Plasma Boy? Yeah, like a radioactive man in Plasma Boy. Yeah,
but it wasn't Plasma Boy, it was what was it?
What was the sidekicks name? Radioactive Man Sidekicks? Uh? Now
(01:33):
I want to know, dude. Well, that's a band, I know,
but I wonder if it's based on that. Maybe I
don't know. Huh. We'll find out, won't we. Well, we'll
look it up and then we'll find out with a
million emails. So um, Plasma Boy, huh. I wish you
must have an affinity for this episode. Then it's great, Chuck.
(01:56):
You know when lightning strikes there, We did a pretty
awesome podcast on lightning. Do you remember we talked about
how it literally rips the sky open, It rips the
atmosphere open, and as it's traveling down through this ripped
open atmosphere, the air on either side of this stuff
(02:17):
is superheated to about twenty thousand degrees. It's more than
three times the surface temperature of the sun celsius. I
should say celsius, not even fair Nhey, it's about twelve
grand celsius. Roughly, it's super hot, right arm sorry, fair
Kney does a fair kneit, yeah, twelve grand fair kneite, yeah, okay.
(02:39):
At any rate, twenty degrees is lightning and this when
the air is superheated, it takes on what's commonly called
the fourth state of matter, plasma. Right, so you've got solid,
boring liquid. The gas awesome, okay, but plasma is super awesome. Gas.
(03:00):
It's it's a bit like a gas, and usually it
starts out as the gas, but it it holds an
electro magnetic field or creates an electromagnetic field, and it
holds an electrical charge. It has free roaming electrons, it
running through it doing all sorts of crazy stuff. It
just basically breaks gas into like this this crazy, weird
(03:23):
different type of fluid and that's plasma and it's awesome. Yeah.
Ionized gas, yes, pretty good stuff. Uh, super high tempts,
like you were saying. And because it's a super high
a tempt, what it can do is it it can
break down. It can it can it can cause something
solid to undergo what's called molecular dissociation, which means it's
(03:48):
not just burning something, it's not melting something. It's actually
exposing it to so much heat that the molecular bonds
break apart and it becomes a pile of it's components
and it breaks it down to from its compound of
molecules to its atomic components. Yeah, pretty amazing. It is
(04:10):
very amazing. UM. And it's like you said, it's not
it's not UM burning Like this process of UM using
a plasma torch to break something down to decompose it
is actually what it's doing. UM doesn't even need to
use oxygen nope. UM. So that means that it's a
(04:32):
process called pyrolysis, which is intense, intense heat that creates
decomposition in some sort of matter, especially organic matter, and UM.
As a result, you get these byproducts. If it's a
an organic piece of materials, say like some corn stalks
that are using a biomass feedstock, UM, it will become
(04:52):
something called sin gas. Right. And then if it's something
like um uh old pair of roller skates, yeah, we'll
save those. First of all plasma, which is not very
good any longer. So the leather is was at one
point organic. I guess it would still be considered an
(05:14):
organic material that turns into gas. The metal in the
skates that will turn into something called slag, right, and
it undergoes the process of vitrification, Yeah, it does. Vitrification
is where this this stuff becomes so the bombs break
between it so thoroughly that it becomes basically a form
(05:36):
of glass, yeah, like volcanic glass, almost at least what
it looks like, Yeah, like obsidient. So all this sounds great.
We're kind of beating around the bush about what a
plasma torch can do. Um, And here's the big, the
big bomb boom. Plasma torches can burn garbage and waste. Yes,
(05:59):
and not only at they can burn it without combustion,
which means there's not a bunch of smoke. Yeah, and
they can actually harvest the energy in that garbage in
incredible ways, because it turns out garbage is chock full
of potential energy. You can release that energy when you
(06:20):
burn it like just regular incineration, but you only can
maybe net about fifteen percent of the energy that's locked
into this big pile of garbage in like a landfill, right,
what a waste. With using a plasma torch to create
pyrolysis or gasification, you can net up to eight of
(06:40):
that energy that's locked in their potentially into garbage. So
what we're talking about is a potential future where we
are using plasma torches to create energy to sell back
to the grid to create steam to turn those turbines.
Like we're always still just knocked out that that's how
you create energy these days. I'm sorry electricity. Sure. Uh.
(07:03):
And then sell off byproducts as well and make more money. Yes,
it's it's like I cannot be more excited about this.
And medical waste, chemical waste, throw it in there. In fact,
you know what, so anything you got in their daddy,
except for like radioactive material, you gotta you gotta swine
(07:25):
flu outbreak. Take those pig carcasses. You throw them into
the gasification chamber. There is no swine flu left. It
is totally gone. Or how about this, I'll bring it
to your farm. I'll have a small one set up.
You gotta swine flu outbreak. I'll come to your farm
and I'll burn up all those nasty pigs. You've got
some toxic waste, Oh well, we'll just burn that in
(07:50):
a gasification chamber and we'll break it down to its
innert components. It's not gonna hurt anybody no more, little lamb.
I guess we keep saying burn. Well, it's really tough
not to. Yes, you see torch torch? Yeah? Nice? All right,
So let's talk Strickland wrote this, Jonathan Strickland of Tech Stuff,
(08:10):
and he did a great job and he seemed to
be as excited about it as we are when he
was writing it, because how can you not be. Uh,
let's talk about some of the parts of these things.
The first thing that he points out that we should
point out is that um any plasma conversion gasification facility
(08:31):
is going to be unique to its own needs. They're
all custom built at this point. There's no standardized unit.
There are some companies that are starting to, like Westinghouse
has some that you can just like what amounts to
off the shelf the backyard gasifier pretty much. Yeah, I
think they have like three different models, although I'm sure
they will custom build you whatever you want and you're
(08:53):
probably right. Uh but any rate, when he wrote this,
they weren't super standardized. And that's good that we're going towards.
But um so, what we're gonna talk about it, you know,
sort of depends on the system. But what you're probably
gonna have is conveyor belt that's gonna move the garbage
into the converter. Yeah, it's gonna play that Bugs Bunny
Powerhouse song. Oh man. Sometimes they will pre treat the
(09:17):
stuff like, although you could, if you had a big
enough um machine, you could throw an entire car in it,
let's say, Yeah, but sometimes it's more efficient to break
that car down and have a pile of tires and
a pile of scrap metal and break it down to
its components, just to make it more efficient. Yeah, because
it's gonna use a lot less energy to break it
down into smaller parts and then feed it into the
(09:39):
the plasma torch incenterator. Then it will to just torch
it with the torch because these things use a lot
of energy. Yeah, a lot of energy. They probably saved
that for when the investors come by right there, like,
watch you now you see it? Now you don't, uh,
you have your furnace of course, and Strickland says, this
(10:00):
is where the magic happens um because you don't need oxygen.
It is air locked and airtight. Um junk goes in,
but the heat doesn't escape into the atmosphere or the
gases or the byproducts, which again that is really saying
something about the material science that's gone into this. Because
these things are burning at like or heated to six
(10:23):
thousand degrees Fahrenheigh again celsius, like the temperature of the sun. Yeah,
in this little in this canister right here. It's amazing.
I'm surprising about plasma weapons for real. I think it's
really great that they don't. I looked into it. It's
like the realm of video games of course, like plasma
guns and stuff. Uh So, if you have a furnace,
(10:46):
which you will, you're gonna have the plasma torch which
is in the lower like half of the furnace, let's say.
And they're also gonna have some drainage for that slag
and some venting for the gas, and it's going to
be water cooled. Yeah. One of the things that came
across to me and this researching this is these things
frequently have like really elegant designs. Right. So, like you
(11:07):
have a drain for the slag, which again is the
molten metal that's broken down to like it's constituent parts.
It's inorganic material and depending on how you treat it
will turn into glass or sand or nodules, right yeah. Um,
And then you have the gas going up, but you
also and you're draining off the slag, but you're also
keeping some in because it forms basically a coke bed
(11:31):
that keeps the furnace hot, which means you have to
use less energy in your in your plasma torch, just
like having your own little lava bed, right just sort
of sitting there. So that's pretty cool, But eventually you're
gonna probably want to get some of the slag out
of there because you're gonna do cool things with it,
which we'll talk about later. The plasma torches themselves are clever,
(11:52):
amazing little instruments. It's basically a uh it's a lightning creator.
Like they use an electrical arc. They push usually just
plain old air through it so that this electric charge
heats the air to these six thousand degrees, turns it
into plasma and then that's what's directed into the furnace.
(12:15):
It is very crazy, but that's that's what they're doing
with a little water cooled torch that that gets super hot,
also doesn't use any kind of oxygen for combustion, right.
And also these things you want to turn me on
with electrical stuff is show me a system that powers itself,
right that I just love that more than anything. And
(12:37):
these facilities, um, I mean they've got they've got excess
energy to spare afterwards. Not only can they power themselves
in a lot of cases, they're selling uh back to
the grid. So once you've got this initial input where
you get this thing going online and you heat that
plasma torch up for the first time, the moment you
start feeding feedstock into it, which in this cases garbage
(13:01):
plain old municipal solid waste from the land back to
the future. Right, um, Right, when you start feeding that,
it starts to produce energy. And the way that it
does that that gas that escapes. Sing gas. Let's talk
about sing gas. Dude. Sincas is a beautiful, amazing, elegant thing.
It has, it's combustible and it's untreated form, so you
(13:24):
could use it to burn like natural gas, although it
has about half the energy density of natural gas. But
if you're burning um garbage, it's just basically free natural gas.
The byproduct you can also treat it and scrub it
and just release it into the atmosphere is innert gas.
No problems with that water water scrubbed, right, But when
(13:46):
the sing gas exits the furnace, it's it wants to expand.
So if you're a very clever engineer, you'll put what's
called the gas turbine right there, and gas turbine is
spun by expand in the gas. Well, you got plenty
of that stuff, right, So you've got the sing gas
going through the gas turbine spinning that so it's a
(14:06):
generating electricity. It's also very hot, so once it goes
through that gas turbine, it can be caught by what's
called a heat recovery steam generator, right, and that's just
got some water going through and it uses hot, this
hot heat gas to turn the water into steam. Well,
that in turn turns another turbine. It generates even more electricity.
(14:28):
And then at the end, before you even treat it,
you have all the sing gas that could be used
to fuel a combustion engine to generate even more electricity,
all from burning garbage. All right, we have to take
a break because I have the peel josh off the
ceiling because you're so excited about sin gas. All right,
we'll be back in a second. How you feeling, buddy,
(15:13):
He okay, I'm so excited. This might as well be
ocean currents. Oh yeah, you like that one too high.
All right, so we're talking about sin gas. You need
to scrub it with water. They passes through a spray
of water. You're actually cleaning gas, which is pretty interesting
as a concept. And then there are all measure of
filters afterward to remove acids and things like that which
(15:38):
do form weird byproducts like salts and salts. It's pretty neat.
If you run it through a base scrubber, it turns
into salts. But there again in like just go ahead,
pick up a handful and eat it. See what happens.
Probably nothing. And if you use an afterburner, sometimes they'll
use a secondary burner, uh, which is actually just natural
(15:59):
gas aims I guess to finish the job. Maybe yeah,
to burn off like any particulate matter in the gas,
like if the if the the process didn't the sing
gas isn't like pure this This basically burns off particular matter.
Or you can scrub it too, And if you're doing
all this, you're probably just going to release it rather
(16:20):
than try to trap it and use it for combustion
if you're gonna scrub it. But you do need to
scrub it, especially if you're gonna release in the atmosphere,
because it does contain some pretty nasty stuff. Cabium, mercury,
a lot of heavy metals, because remember what what this
process does. The plasma torch and the gasification process breaks
these things down into the their constituent um atoms and
(16:44):
molecules and heavy metals and and um some other things
are not really good for us, even in their most
basic form. For the most part, it's gonna take something
that chemically speaking, was once a threat but have been
broken down to its separate, innocuous in our components. Some things,
even when they're at their most basic level, are still
(17:06):
dangerous to It's like cadmium, like mercury, like other heavy metals,
and these things do have to be taken out of
the slag and or the sing gas and disposed of.
The thing is is, if you put a thousand tons
of municipal solid waste into one of these furnaces, you're
only going to get about twenty tons of that stuff.
(17:31):
So so we will still need landfills or something like that,
but it will just be for these very um dangerous
chemicals are very dangerous, like heavy metals or something like that.
But you still got great stuff out of the other
nine eight tons. Yeah, exactly. So the byproducts we talked
about the sing gash, The slag and the heat are
(17:52):
all used or not always used, depends on what you're
trying to do with your plant, but they can potentially
all be used. And the slag, I think you already
said you're getting. So that means the weight of your
resulting slag is only of what you started with. So
you took that buick, uh, and it now weighs what
(18:13):
it formally weighed. Right, you could pick it up if
you want. Yeah, maybe so, probably should wait for it
to cool down. And the volume is only about five
percent of the original waste volume. Uh. And like you said,
it looks like volcanic glass. And they can use it
in asphalt and concrete. They can pour it directly into
molds and make paper stones. And it's all of a sudden,
(18:35):
it's a it's a it's something that you would find
at your Big Bucks hardware store for your garden, which
is pretty amazing. Another um potential creation that you can
use slag for is to turn into rock wall. Man,
I love this stuff right like, so, as this molten
slag is coming out, if you expose it to compressed
air blasts, it turns into this thready very light but
(18:58):
also very strong wool material like gray cotton candy is
how um how Strickland puts it. And there's a lot
of uses for it, like you can use in hydroponics.
It's a it's a growing medium. Um. You can also
use it as insulation. Apparently it has twice the insulating
properties of um fibery lass. Amazing. Yeah, it is um
(19:22):
and you can also use the clean up oil spills.
That says, Yeah, this is the one that really gets
me going. It's lighter than water, so you can just
throw it on water and it'll sit there and it's
super absorbent, so it'll basically what they'll probably do is
contain it in something like a tube or something and
then just throw that tube in a big circle around
(19:43):
an oil spill. It'll float on the water soak up
the oil um and then you just go back and
scoop up the Rockwell, yeah, I guess. So I had
a friend that used to work and um, I need
to look that up and him up actually, because I
don't know where it went. But they were using banana
fibers to do the same thing to clean up oil spills.
(20:05):
Didn't we do one on oil spills and like your
friend you emailed with them or something like that about it.
I don't know, I feel like we did. It seems
like the distant past. But here's the cool thing about
the the rock will. They currently use it. It's not
just something that you can only get as a byproduct
of creating the sin gas. It is produced by mining rocks.
(20:27):
You melt it down and then spin it sort of
like cotton candy, like you said, in a big machine.
And here's the cool thing about the gasification though, the
way they make the rock will. Now it's about ten
cents I'm sorry about a dollar a pound as a byproduct.
It could be sold for ten cents a pound. Plus
you don't have all of them. The disturbances in the
(20:49):
earth of mining rocks turning to rock will. It's a
byproduct of garbage that you're burning. That's great, it's amazing.
This is like when when when when when wind wind wind,
the slag is not leachable. That's another cool thing that
I found too. So Strickland specifically said you can't do
this with radioactive material. I have seen that you can. Yeah,
(21:12):
And what you can do is it'll turn it into
the slag. The subsidian glass, and while it's still radioactive,
it's not going anywhere. It's not going to leach out
into the soil, and it shall. It should be stable
like this for thousands of years, conceivably until the radioactivity
is not harmful the humans any longer. It would be
(21:34):
a really great you can just turn it into these
radioactive paver stones that, yeah, that might even glow at night.
You'd have a nice little path in your backyard and
it'll glow. There's actually glass like that. I can't remember
what it's technical term is, but in the mid twentieth
century there was a big trend for radio They called
(21:55):
it vasoline glass because it glowed about the color of vasoline,
which is we heard. But you can find cut glass
like ash trays and sculptures that glow, and the reason
they glow because they're radioactive. I think, I know what
you're talking about, really neat looking. But it's also like,
I don't know if that should be in my home.
I'd light your own cigarette hold it against All right, Uh, well,
(22:18):
let's take another break here and we'll talk about where
we are now and where we could be headed with gasification.
(22:47):
All right, So here's what I found, and this might
not even be current. What I saw was that they're
currently eight functioning plasma gasification facilities in the world. That's
that sounds about right. One in Taiwan, when in Japan,
one in Canada, when in England, one here in the USA.
Where's the one in the US? Uh think Vero Beach, Florida.
(23:11):
Oh yeah, um, one in India, one in China. And
get this one, there's one on an aircraft carrier net
that the US is using. The idea is that it's
a little small unit that basically just treats the on
board waste. So they envisioned the future where like cruise
(23:31):
ships have these things and then you just dump all
their garbage in the Ocean's exactly. You treat all the waste,
and I guess they could even sell by products that
they wanted to. Pretty cool. There's one that's supposedly going.
I know you saw it was mothballed, right, But there's
one that's playing. They have like all the I guess
(23:52):
them licenses and certifications that they need to build one
in Port St. Lucy, Florida, and it's supposedly it started
out um as it was going to take on a
thousand tons of garbage a day and put out UM. Third,
it was gonna generate sixty seven megawatt hours a day
(24:14):
and sell thirty three of that, so it would completely
power its own operations and still have thirty three megawatt
hours to put out, like to sell back to the grid.
It's just more money that this thing is making, right. UM.
What I saw is that, and I think it was
like two thousand fourteen UM. It said that it was
gonna be about six of that, so it would take
(24:36):
in about six hundred tons of garbage and generate a
total output of twenty two megawatts UM. But yeah, I
don't know if it's coming or not. But either way,
the thing that got me about this one, chuck was
that they planned to not just accept landfill waste, but
to go out and mind existing landfills and use those things.
(25:00):
It's feed stock. And in fact, there was one in
um Uhashinai, Japan that closed down because they ran out
of feedstock. They burned through all the garbage. Wow. Yeah,
that's pretty great. When you're out of garbage exactly, they
have to go get more garbage. We'll stop earlier this year,
I think. Um. The world's largest plant. Um is. They
(25:23):
said it was near completion in May, so it may
be done at this point. But a company called air
Products um began processing three and fifty thousand tons at
this facility, creating power. Wow. Wait during fifty tons, Yeah,
I said enough power for homes and uh, fifty full
(25:44):
time jobs, which is not that many, not for that much,
but no, which is highly automated, I would guess, yeah,
which is sort of good in a way. Um, but
I guess you'd want more jobs created to this is
sort of a balancing acting cats. Uh. And it cost
half a billion million dollars um and that is one
of the that's one of the stumbling blocks along the way.
(26:07):
Strickland points out that anytime you have a new technology,
it's gonna be super expensive to get going. And everyone's
dug in on the landfill and how we're doing things now,
so it's gonna take a lot. It'll get cheaper over time,
like everything else. That's a new new way of doing things.
And you also have to win over the establishment with
(26:27):
with dollars. You have to show them why it'll be
better for them financially. Well. Yeah. Also, if if say
a municipality is kind of like, well, we're not gonna
close down the landfill, but if you guys want to
open one, go ahead. Well, then you have a plasma
waste treatment facility and a landfill in direct competition. And
(26:48):
if you are their customer, meaning you have some garbage
that you want to take, you don't care where your
garbage is going, probably you want to go to whoever
has the cheaper fees for accepting that garbage. Yeah, because
a landfill is kind of an expensive proposition there, tipping
fees are going to be high. It's basically the only
way they can make money by charging people to deposit
(27:08):
their garbage with a plasma waste treatment facility. They're making
money all over the place. They're selling slag as paper stuff,
they're selling rockwell to clean up oil spills, they're selling
electricity back to the grid. So they're making money in
all these other ways that can pay for the operation
and generate a profit so they could keep their tipping
(27:29):
fees low. So if you own a landfill and somebody
opens a plasma waste stream of facility in the same city,
do you may be in a bit of trouble business wise. Yeah,
keep the tipping feel low and uh, and not just
people like municipalities will begin using your services ultimately, because
I think the one thing that's lacking still is that
environmental will. And we're definitely a lot further along than
(27:53):
we were when Strickland wrote this article. But I think
that that that's one of the things that makes it
so attractive is we're gonna earn your garbage and really
really green sustainable ways create energy from it. And we're
gonna go get your old garbage and burn that too, yeah,
and make even more electricity and the plant's gonna power
itself with your garbage. It's it's a win win, win,
(28:17):
win win. So Strickland interviewed, um he was from Georgia Tech, right,
a doctor Cisero. I'm sorry Cerco Cercio. Oh, I thought
it was Cistero too. Yeah, it's a mine trick are
before see um So, Dr Sercio said he envisions a
(28:37):
future where you don't just have like the big municipality plant,
like that'd be great and all. Maybe you could bring
a plasma torch to a landfill and just bore a
hole through it and stick that plasma torch in there,
cap it off and start burning that junk from the
inside out. Yeah, but I feel like, well, whoa, there
(28:57):
could be a coal steam nearby? What about That's what
I thought? What about? Like, uh, what Centralia, Pennsylvania. Right, Centralia,
Pennsylvania caught fire. There's a combustion fire going on. If
any coal steam was exposed to this, it would it
would just be decomposed into carbon into its constituents. It
(29:19):
wouldn't catch fire. That's nothing to do with this again.
So it's actually extremely safe and the landfill itself would
act as the furnace. That's amazing, isn't it. Like it's
really tough to think of really intense heat without thinking fire.
But that that is not where this goes. Yeah uh
(29:40):
or Dr Sir Sero Cercio CEO says, hey, why not
work together here and bring a plasma converter to another
existing traditional facility where they can work hand in hand,
like a coal fire power plant. Yeah, I want to.
So what this would do is you would just basically
(30:02):
stick a plasma facility onto it into the existing infrastructure
and just accept garbage in there and burn that and everything,
and then the sing gas that's created would be used
to help fire the coal fire. Plants. Then it would
be used for combustion, right, and you would be using
less coal or less fossil fuels to UM do the
(30:24):
same thing to create steam to spin the turbine, because
ultimately that's what it all comes down to with electricity.
So if you have a UM a green way to
supplement this stuff, all you're doing is using less fossil
fuel too. It's also way cheaper because then you're not
having to treat the sin gas, which apparently is half
(30:44):
the cost of a plasma treatment facility because these guys
have to treat the escaping smoke and everything anyway. So
all you're doing is adding actually a cleaner UM, a
cleaner fuel into the fire. It's going to ultimately be
cleaned down the line. Amazing. And then we talked about
UM sort of half joking, but they're serious about decontamination.
(31:07):
You know, if you have an outbreak on your farm
and you have a bunch of you know, sad, but
if you have a bunch of sick, disease dead livestock,
just bring out the h the P three thousand, throw
those cows in there bing bang boom. Yeah, maybe grind
them up first two? Yeah, why not? UM, yeah, and
(31:28):
you can do that with soil as well. Contaminated soil.
Got an e. Col Ii outbreak in your spinach field?
Not anymore? Yeah, a bunch of dirty humans not anymore,
storm in their medical waste to bio hazard. Nope, you've
got inert stuff. Ye, poopy cruise ship the P three
in there at once. I'm kidding about dirty humans. By
(31:50):
the way, I didn't even need to say that. I
don't think so. Okay, good, I hope not. You never know, buddy.
So that is plasma waste tree meant hopefully the wave
of the future. Yeah, we should title this something a
little sexier so people aren't like, yeah, there's a lot
of people, because it should Yeah, because then like even
(32:11):
people that are super into like green technologies will probably
be like, I want to learn about this weird science thing. Yeah,
how about plasma waste treatment? Please listen, Signed Josh and Chuck. Yeah,
I like it. It's a little clumsy, will work on it.
If you want to know more about plasma treatment facilities
or any of that stuff, you can type those words
(32:32):
in the search bar at how stuff works dot com.
And since Chuck said sexy, it's time for listener mail
I'm gonna call this you guys got Africa right. Thank you, Hey, guys,
listen to your podcast about female puberty, and it was
very impressed with the thoughtfulness and sensitivity in which you
explain things and gave advice. Um. By the way, we
(32:54):
heard from a lot of people on that, and thank you,
a lot of young women, a lot of grown women,
a lot of men and dad's uh. And that one
meant a lot. It was really good to get that
one right. I think, Um. The one thing that we
didn't quite get right that someone has pointed out more
than a few times is, uh, we said boy crazy
a lot, and we should have gone out of our
(33:14):
way to say, like, you know, you might also be
girl crazy, or you might not have sexual feelings and thoughts.
I wish we had that one back. I know. That's
you know, I'm giving us a break on that because
we people know how we feel about that stuff. We
just didn't pointed out as strong as we should have.
But that's I mean, that's how things change and improve
(33:34):
those you know what we're saying that now, young young
ladies out there going through puberty might like other girls.
You might not like boys or girls. Uh, And all
that's okay too, Yes, all right, thanks for saying that.
So back to this, Probably listen to about two hundred
or more of your podcasts. Man, you get a long
way to go, buddy, uh. And I'm always like, I'm
almost a three oh one, yeah, only five after that.
(33:59):
I'm always happy to are you guys, are your best
to be specific when you make references to events in
countries or geographic regions. What I mean by this is
you don't generalize like a lot of people do and
say crap, like in Africa they blah blah blah, or
in Europe it's normal to blah blah blah. When you
got to the part of your latest show where you
talk about female puberty rights, I was elated to hear
(34:20):
you being careful not to say in Ghana, there is
a village where dot dot dot. The reason for my
reaction is that I've lived in the US for twenty years,
but I'm from Ghana. There at least twenty distinct ethnic
groups and languages in Ghana alone, and I know for
a fact that the ritual you described is not done
in all of them. In fact, I've heard of it,
but I don't think it happens anymore. By the way,
the official language in Ghana is English, so we are
(34:42):
able to communicate with each other. Nothing irritates US Africans
more than to hear someone started sentence within Africa. I
bet it's continent that huge, because no one says well
in North America. No that they do say like in
the US. But it's a confederation of like associated states
(35:03):
in Africa. It's like, yeah, you're you're putting the whole
continent and it's all these different countries with all these
different cultures. Yeah, it's amazing. So thanks guys for being
the thoughtful and professional. Eric from Seattle by way of gone,
I guess yeah, thanks a lot er appreciate that. Thank
you Greedy. If you want to get in touch with this,
whether to give us big ups or pooh pooh us
(35:27):
or um submit some sort of neutral statement that's fact based,
who knows a lot. Yeah, you can tweet to us
at s y s K podcast. You can join us
on Facebook, dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know. You
can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how
Stuff Works dot com, and as always, joined us at
our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot Com.
(35:52):
Stuff You Should Know is a production of I Heart
Radio for more podcasts for my heart Radio because at
the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows. H
Hey there, it's Josh and for this week's s Y
s K selects, I've chosen please listen to How Plasma
Waste Converters Work. It is one of those unsung sleeper
episodes that may prove to be one of the greatest
Stuff You Should Know episodes of all time. It talks
about technology we had never heard of until we came
across it and started researching it, and still to this day,
(00:22):
five full years later, it is just as mind blowing
to me as when I first heard about it. So
check out. Please listen to how Plasma waste Converters work.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
(00:48):
Just Charles W. Chuck Bryant, guest producer Noel is here.
Noel's moved in. Yeah, yeah, so what that that cod
is on the floor. He works constantly. Uh you know
what my superhero nickname was as a child. Uh, I'll
tell you Plasma Boy. No it wasn't. Yeah, I'm just kidding.
(01:12):
That was a weird joke. Why we're talking about plasma
Plasma Boy? Yeah, like a radioactive man in Plasma Boy. Yeah,
but it wasn't Plasma Boy, it was what was it?
What was the sidekicks name? Radioactive Man Sidekicks? Uh? Now
(01:33):
I want to know, dude. Well, that's a band, I know,
but I wonder if it's based on that. Maybe I
don't know. Huh. We'll find out, won't we. Well, we'll
look it up and then we'll find out with a
million emails. So um, Plasma Boy, huh. I wish you
must have an affinity for this episode. Then it's great, Chuck.
(01:56):
You know when lightning strikes there, We did a pretty
awesome podcast on lightning. Do you remember we talked about
how it literally rips the sky open, It rips the
atmosphere open, and as it's traveling down through this ripped
open atmosphere, the air on either side of this stuff
(02:17):
is superheated to about twenty thousand degrees. It's more than
three times the surface temperature of the sun celsius. I
should say celsius, not even fair Nhey, it's about twelve
grand celsius. Roughly, it's super hot, right arm sorry, fair
Kney does a fair kneit, yeah, twelve grand fair kneite, yeah, okay.
(02:39):
At any rate, twenty degrees is lightning and this when
the air is superheated, it takes on what's commonly called
the fourth state of matter, plasma. Right, so you've got solid,
boring liquid. The gas awesome, okay, but plasma is super awesome. Gas.
(03:00):
It's it's a bit like a gas, and usually it
starts out as the gas, but it it holds an
electro magnetic field or creates an electromagnetic field, and it
holds an electrical charge. It has free roaming electrons, it
running through it doing all sorts of crazy stuff. It
just basically breaks gas into like this this crazy, weird
(03:23):
different type of fluid and that's plasma and it's awesome. Yeah.
Ionized gas, yes, pretty good stuff. Uh, super high tempts,
like you were saying. And because it's a super high
a tempt, what it can do is it it can
break down. It can it can it can cause something
solid to undergo what's called molecular dissociation, which means it's
(03:48):
not just burning something, it's not melting something. It's actually
exposing it to so much heat that the molecular bonds
break apart and it becomes a pile of it's components
and it breaks it down to from its compound of
molecules to its atomic components. Yeah, pretty amazing. It is
(04:10):
very amazing. UM. And it's like you said, it's not
it's not UM burning Like this process of UM using
a plasma torch to break something down to decompose it
is actually what it's doing. UM doesn't even need to
use oxygen nope. UM. So that means that it's a
(04:32):
process called pyrolysis, which is intense, intense heat that creates
decomposition in some sort of matter, especially organic matter, and UM.
As a result, you get these byproducts. If it's a
an organic piece of materials, say like some corn stalks
that are using a biomass feedstock, UM, it will become
(04:52):
something called sin gas. Right. And then if it's something
like um uh old pair of roller skates, yeah, we'll
save those. First of all plasma, which is not very
good any longer. So the leather is was at one
point organic. I guess it would still be considered an
(05:14):
organic material that turns into gas. The metal in the
skates that will turn into something called slag, right, and
it undergoes the process of vitrification, Yeah, it does. Vitrification
is where this this stuff becomes so the bombs break
between it so thoroughly that it becomes basically a form
(05:36):
of glass, yeah, like volcanic glass, almost at least what
it looks like, Yeah, like obsidient. So all this sounds great.
We're kind of beating around the bush about what a
plasma torch can do. Um, And here's the big, the
big bomb boom. Plasma torches can burn garbage and waste. Yes,
(05:59):
and not only at they can burn it without combustion,
which means there's not a bunch of smoke. Yeah, and
they can actually harvest the energy in that garbage in
incredible ways, because it turns out garbage is chock full
of potential energy. You can release that energy when you
(06:20):
burn it like just regular incineration, but you only can
maybe net about fifteen percent of the energy that's locked
into this big pile of garbage in like a landfill, right,
what a waste. With using a plasma torch to create
pyrolysis or gasification, you can net up to eight of
(06:40):
that energy that's locked in their potentially into garbage. So
what we're talking about is a potential future where we
are using plasma torches to create energy to sell back
to the grid to create steam to turn those turbines.
Like we're always still just knocked out that that's how
you create energy these days. I'm sorry electricity. Sure. Uh.
(07:03):
And then sell off byproducts as well and make more money. Yes,
it's it's like I cannot be more excited about this.
And medical waste, chemical waste, throw it in there. In fact,
you know what, so anything you got in their daddy,
except for like radioactive material, you gotta you gotta swine
(07:25):
flu outbreak. Take those pig carcasses. You throw them into
the gasification chamber. There is no swine flu left. It
is totally gone. Or how about this, I'll bring it
to your farm. I'll have a small one set up.
You gotta swine flu outbreak. I'll come to your farm
and I'll burn up all those nasty pigs. You've got
some toxic waste, Oh well, we'll just burn that in
(07:50):
a gasification chamber and we'll break it down to its
innert components. It's not gonna hurt anybody no more, little lamb.
I guess we keep saying burn. Well, it's really tough
not to. Yes, you see torch torch? Yeah? Nice? All right,
So let's talk Strickland wrote this, Jonathan Strickland of Tech Stuff,
(08:10):
and he did a great job and he seemed to
be as excited about it as we are when he
was writing it, because how can you not be. Uh,
let's talk about some of the parts of these things.
The first thing that he points out that we should
point out is that um any plasma conversion gasification facility
(08:31):
is going to be unique to its own needs. They're
all custom built at this point. There's no standardized unit.
There are some companies that are starting to, like Westinghouse
has some that you can just like what amounts to
off the shelf the backyard gasifier pretty much. Yeah, I
think they have like three different models, although I'm sure
they will custom build you whatever you want and you're
(08:53):
probably right. Uh but any rate, when he wrote this,
they weren't super standardized. And that's good that we're going towards.
But um so, what we're gonna talk about it, you know,
sort of depends on the system. But what you're probably
gonna have is conveyor belt that's gonna move the garbage
into the converter. Yeah, it's gonna play that Bugs Bunny
Powerhouse song. Oh man. Sometimes they will pre treat the
(09:17):
stuff like, although you could, if you had a big
enough um machine, you could throw an entire car in it,
let's say, Yeah, but sometimes it's more efficient to break
that car down and have a pile of tires and
a pile of scrap metal and break it down to
its components, just to make it more efficient. Yeah, because
it's gonna use a lot less energy to break it
down into smaller parts and then feed it into the
(09:39):
the plasma torch incenterator. Then it will to just torch
it with the torch because these things use a lot
of energy. Yeah, a lot of energy. They probably saved
that for when the investors come by right there, like,
watch you now you see it? Now you don't, uh,
you have your furnace of course, and Strickland says, this
(10:00):
is where the magic happens um because you don't need oxygen.
It is air locked and airtight. Um junk goes in,
but the heat doesn't escape into the atmosphere or the
gases or the byproducts, which again that is really saying
something about the material science that's gone into this. Because
these things are burning at like or heated to six
(10:23):
thousand degrees Fahrenheigh again celsius, like the temperature of the sun. Yeah,
in this little in this canister right here. It's amazing.
I'm surprising about plasma weapons for real. I think it's
really great that they don't. I looked into it. It's
like the realm of video games of course, like plasma
guns and stuff. Uh So, if you have a furnace,
(10:46):
which you will, you're gonna have the plasma torch which
is in the lower like half of the furnace, let's say.
And they're also gonna have some drainage for that slag
and some venting for the gas, and it's going to
be water cooled. Yeah. One of the things that came
across to me and this researching this is these things
frequently have like really elegant designs. Right. So, like you
(11:07):
have a drain for the slag, which again is the
molten metal that's broken down to like it's constituent parts.
It's inorganic material and depending on how you treat it
will turn into glass or sand or nodules, right yeah. Um,
And then you have the gas going up, but you
also and you're draining off the slag, but you're also
keeping some in because it forms basically a coke bed
(11:31):
that keeps the furnace hot, which means you have to
use less energy in your in your plasma torch, just
like having your own little lava bed, right just sort
of sitting there. So that's pretty cool, But eventually you're
gonna probably want to get some of the slag out
of there because you're gonna do cool things with it,
which we'll talk about later. The plasma torches themselves are clever,
(11:52):
amazing little instruments. It's basically a uh it's a lightning creator.
Like they use an electrical arc. They push usually just
plain old air through it so that this electric charge
heats the air to these six thousand degrees, turns it
into plasma and then that's what's directed into the furnace.
(12:15):
It is very crazy, but that's that's what they're doing
with a little water cooled torch that that gets super hot,
also doesn't use any kind of oxygen for combustion, right.
And also these things you want to turn me on
with electrical stuff is show me a system that powers itself,
right that I just love that more than anything. And
(12:37):
these facilities, um, I mean they've got they've got excess
energy to spare afterwards. Not only can they power themselves
in a lot of cases, they're selling uh back to
the grid. So once you've got this initial input where
you get this thing going online and you heat that
plasma torch up for the first time, the moment you
start feeding feedstock into it, which in this cases garbage
(13:01):
plain old municipal solid waste from the land back to
the future. Right, um, Right, when you start feeding that,
it starts to produce energy. And the way that it
does that that gas that escapes. Sing gas. Let's talk
about sing gas. Dude. Sincas is a beautiful, amazing, elegant thing.
It has, it's combustible and it's untreated form, so you
(13:24):
could use it to burn like natural gas, although it
has about half the energy density of natural gas. But
if you're burning um garbage, it's just basically free natural gas.
The byproduct you can also treat it and scrub it
and just release it into the atmosphere is innert gas.
No problems with that water water scrubbed, right, But when
(13:46):
the sing gas exits the furnace, it's it wants to expand.
So if you're a very clever engineer, you'll put what's
called the gas turbine right there, and gas turbine is
spun by expand in the gas. Well, you got plenty
of that stuff, right, So you've got the sing gas
going through the gas turbine spinning that so it's a
(14:06):
generating electricity. It's also very hot, so once it goes
through that gas turbine, it can be caught by what's
called a heat recovery steam generator, right, and that's just
got some water going through and it uses hot, this
hot heat gas to turn the water into steam. Well,
that in turn turns another turbine. It generates even more electricity.
(14:28):
And then at the end, before you even treat it,
you have all the sing gas that could be used
to fuel a combustion engine to generate even more electricity,
all from burning garbage. All right, we have to take
a break because I have the peel josh off the
ceiling because you're so excited about sin gas. All right,
we'll be back in a second. How you feeling, buddy,
(15:13):
He okay, I'm so excited. This might as well be
ocean currents. Oh yeah, you like that one too high.
All right, so we're talking about sin gas. You need
to scrub it with water. They passes through a spray
of water. You're actually cleaning gas, which is pretty interesting
as a concept. And then there are all measure of
filters afterward to remove acids and things like that which
(15:38):
do form weird byproducts like salts and salts. It's pretty neat.
If you run it through a base scrubber, it turns
into salts. But there again in like just go ahead,
pick up a handful and eat it. See what happens.
Probably nothing. And if you use an afterburner, sometimes they'll
use a secondary burner, uh, which is actually just natural
(15:59):
gas aims I guess to finish the job. Maybe yeah,
to burn off like any particulate matter in the gas,
like if the if the the process didn't the sing
gas isn't like pure this This basically burns off particular matter.
Or you can scrub it too, And if you're doing
all this, you're probably just going to release it rather
(16:20):
than try to trap it and use it for combustion
if you're gonna scrub it. But you do need to
scrub it, especially if you're gonna release in the atmosphere,
because it does contain some pretty nasty stuff. Cabium, mercury,
a lot of heavy metals, because remember what what this
process does. The plasma torch and the gasification process breaks
these things down into the their constituent um atoms and
(16:44):
molecules and heavy metals and and um some other things
are not really good for us, even in their most
basic form. For the most part, it's gonna take something
that chemically speaking, was once a threat but have been
broken down to its separate, innocuous in our components. Some things,
even when they're at their most basic level, are still
(17:06):
dangerous to It's like cadmium, like mercury, like other heavy metals,
and these things do have to be taken out of
the slag and or the sing gas and disposed of.
The thing is is, if you put a thousand tons
of municipal solid waste into one of these furnaces, you're
only going to get about twenty tons of that stuff.
(17:31):
So so we will still need landfills or something like that,
but it will just be for these very um dangerous
chemicals are very dangerous, like heavy metals or something like that.
But you still got great stuff out of the other
nine eight tons. Yeah, exactly. So the byproducts we talked
about the sing gash, The slag and the heat are
(17:52):
all used or not always used, depends on what you're
trying to do with your plant, but they can potentially
all be used. And the slag, I think you already
said you're getting. So that means the weight of your
resulting slag is only of what you started with. So
you took that buick, uh, and it now weighs what
(18:13):
it formally weighed. Right, you could pick it up if
you want. Yeah, maybe so, probably should wait for it
to cool down. And the volume is only about five
percent of the original waste volume. Uh. And like you said,
it looks like volcanic glass. And they can use it
in asphalt and concrete. They can pour it directly into
molds and make paper stones. And it's all of a sudden,
(18:35):
it's a it's a it's something that you would find
at your Big Bucks hardware store for your garden, which
is pretty amazing. Another um potential creation that you can
use slag for is to turn into rock wall. Man,
I love this stuff right like, so, as this molten
slag is coming out, if you expose it to compressed
air blasts, it turns into this thready very light but
(18:58):
also very strong wool material like gray cotton candy is
how um how Strickland puts it. And there's a lot
of uses for it, like you can use in hydroponics.
It's a it's a growing medium. Um. You can also
use it as insulation. Apparently it has twice the insulating
properties of um fibery lass. Amazing. Yeah, it is um
(19:22):
and you can also use the clean up oil spills.
That says, Yeah, this is the one that really gets
me going. It's lighter than water, so you can just
throw it on water and it'll sit there and it's
super absorbent, so it'll basically what they'll probably do is
contain it in something like a tube or something and
then just throw that tube in a big circle around
(19:43):
an oil spill. It'll float on the water soak up
the oil um and then you just go back and
scoop up the Rockwell, yeah, I guess. So I had
a friend that used to work and um, I need
to look that up and him up actually, because I
don't know where it went. But they were using banana
fibers to do the same thing to clean up oil spills.
(20:05):
Didn't we do one on oil spills and like your
friend you emailed with them or something like that about it.
I don't know, I feel like we did. It seems
like the distant past. But here's the cool thing about
the the rock will. They currently use it. It's not
just something that you can only get as a byproduct
of creating the sin gas. It is produced by mining rocks.
(20:27):
You melt it down and then spin it sort of
like cotton candy, like you said, in a big machine.
And here's the cool thing about the gasification though, the
way they make the rock will. Now it's about ten
cents I'm sorry about a dollar a pound as a byproduct.
It could be sold for ten cents a pound. Plus
you don't have all of them. The disturbances in the
(20:49):
earth of mining rocks turning to rock will. It's a
byproduct of garbage that you're burning. That's great, it's amazing.
This is like when when when when when wind wind wind,
the slag is not leachable. That's another cool thing that
I found too. So Strickland specifically said you can't do
this with radioactive material. I have seen that you can. Yeah,
(21:12):
And what you can do is it'll turn it into
the slag. The subsidian glass, and while it's still radioactive,
it's not going anywhere. It's not going to leach out
into the soil, and it shall. It should be stable
like this for thousands of years, conceivably until the radioactivity
is not harmful the humans any longer. It would be
(21:34):
a really great you can just turn it into these
radioactive paver stones that, yeah, that might even glow at night.
You'd have a nice little path in your backyard and
it'll glow. There's actually glass like that. I can't remember
what it's technical term is, but in the mid twentieth
century there was a big trend for radio They called
(21:55):
it vasoline glass because it glowed about the color of vasoline,
which is we heard. But you can find cut glass
like ash trays and sculptures that glow, and the reason
they glow because they're radioactive. I think, I know what
you're talking about, really neat looking. But it's also like,
I don't know if that should be in my home.
I'd light your own cigarette hold it against All right, Uh, well,
(22:18):
let's take another break here and we'll talk about where
we are now and where we could be headed with gasification.
(22:47):
All right, So here's what I found, and this might
not even be current. What I saw was that they're
currently eight functioning plasma gasification facilities in the world. That's
that sounds about right. One in Taiwan, when in Japan,
one in Canada, when in England, one here in the USA.
Where's the one in the US? Uh think Vero Beach, Florida.
(23:11):
Oh yeah, um, one in India, one in China. And
get this one, there's one on an aircraft carrier net
that the US is using. The idea is that it's
a little small unit that basically just treats the on
board waste. So they envisioned the future where like cruise
(23:31):
ships have these things and then you just dump all
their garbage in the Ocean's exactly. You treat all the waste,
and I guess they could even sell by products that
they wanted to. Pretty cool. There's one that's supposedly going.
I know you saw it was mothballed, right, But there's
one that's playing. They have like all the I guess
(23:52):
them licenses and certifications that they need to build one
in Port St. Lucy, Florida, and it's supposedly it started
out um as it was going to take on a
thousand tons of garbage a day and put out UM. Third,
it was gonna generate sixty seven megawatt hours a day
(24:14):
and sell thirty three of that, so it would completely
power its own operations and still have thirty three megawatt
hours to put out, like to sell back to the grid.
It's just more money that this thing is making, right. UM.
What I saw is that, and I think it was
like two thousand fourteen UM. It said that it was
gonna be about six of that, so it would take
(24:36):
in about six hundred tons of garbage and generate a
total output of twenty two megawatts UM. But yeah, I
don't know if it's coming or not. But either way,
the thing that got me about this one, chuck was
that they planned to not just accept landfill waste, but
to go out and mind existing landfills and use those things.
(25:00):
It's feed stock. And in fact, there was one in
um Uhashinai, Japan that closed down because they ran out
of feedstock. They burned through all the garbage. Wow. Yeah,
that's pretty great. When you're out of garbage exactly, they
have to go get more garbage. We'll stop earlier this year,
I think. Um. The world's largest plant. Um is. They
(25:23):
said it was near completion in May, so it may
be done at this point. But a company called air
Products um began processing three and fifty thousand tons at
this facility, creating power. Wow. Wait during fifty tons, Yeah,
I said enough power for homes and uh, fifty full
(25:44):
time jobs, which is not that many, not for that much,
but no, which is highly automated, I would guess, yeah,
which is sort of good in a way. Um, but
I guess you'd want more jobs created to this is
sort of a balancing acting cats. Uh. And it cost
half a billion million dollars um and that is one
of the that's one of the stumbling blocks along the way.
(26:07):
Strickland points out that anytime you have a new technology,
it's gonna be super expensive to get going. And everyone's
dug in on the landfill and how we're doing things now,
so it's gonna take a lot. It'll get cheaper over time,
like everything else. That's a new new way of doing things.
And you also have to win over the establishment with
(26:27):
with dollars. You have to show them why it'll be
better for them financially. Well. Yeah. Also, if if say
a municipality is kind of like, well, we're not gonna
close down the landfill, but if you guys want to
open one, go ahead. Well, then you have a plasma
waste treatment facility and a landfill in direct competition. And
(26:48):
if you are their customer, meaning you have some garbage
that you want to take, you don't care where your
garbage is going, probably you want to go to whoever
has the cheaper fees for accepting that garbage. Yeah, because
a landfill is kind of an expensive proposition there, tipping
fees are going to be high. It's basically the only
way they can make money by charging people to deposit
(27:08):
their garbage with a plasma waste treatment facility. They're making
money all over the place. They're selling slag as paper stuff,
they're selling rockwell to clean up oil spills, they're selling
electricity back to the grid. So they're making money in
all these other ways that can pay for the operation
and generate a profit so they could keep their tipping
(27:29):
fees low. So if you own a landfill and somebody
opens a plasma waste stream of facility in the same city,
do you may be in a bit of trouble business wise. Yeah,
keep the tipping feel low and uh, and not just
people like municipalities will begin using your services ultimately, because
I think the one thing that's lacking still is that
environmental will. And we're definitely a lot further along than
(27:53):
we were when Strickland wrote this article. But I think
that that that's one of the things that makes it
so attractive is we're gonna earn your garbage and really
really green sustainable ways create energy from it. And we're
gonna go get your old garbage and burn that too, yeah,
and make even more electricity and the plant's gonna power
itself with your garbage. It's it's a win win, win,
(28:17):
win win. So Strickland interviewed, um he was from Georgia Tech, right,
a doctor Cisero. I'm sorry Cerco Cercio. Oh, I thought
it was Cistero too. Yeah, it's a mine trick are
before see um So, Dr Sercio said he envisions a
(28:37):
future where you don't just have like the big municipality plant,
like that'd be great and all. Maybe you could bring
a plasma torch to a landfill and just bore a
hole through it and stick that plasma torch in there,
cap it off and start burning that junk from the
inside out. Yeah, but I feel like, well, whoa, there
(28:57):
could be a coal steam nearby? What about That's what
I thought? What about? Like, uh, what Centralia, Pennsylvania. Right, Centralia,
Pennsylvania caught fire. There's a combustion fire going on. If
any coal steam was exposed to this, it would it
would just be decomposed into carbon into its constituents. It
(29:19):
wouldn't catch fire. That's nothing to do with this again.
So it's actually extremely safe and the landfill itself would
act as the furnace. That's amazing, isn't it. Like it's
really tough to think of really intense heat without thinking fire.
But that that is not where this goes. Yeah uh
(29:40):
or Dr Sir Sero Cercio CEO says, hey, why not
work together here and bring a plasma converter to another
existing traditional facility where they can work hand in hand,
like a coal fire power plant. Yeah, I want to.
So what this would do is you would just basically
(30:02):
stick a plasma facility onto it into the existing infrastructure
and just accept garbage in there and burn that and everything,
and then the sing gas that's created would be used
to help fire the coal fire. Plants. Then it would
be used for combustion, right, and you would be using
less coal or less fossil fuels to UM do the
(30:24):
same thing to create steam to spin the turbine, because
ultimately that's what it all comes down to with electricity.
So if you have a UM a green way to
supplement this stuff, all you're doing is using less fossil
fuel too. It's also way cheaper because then you're not
having to treat the sin gas, which apparently is half
(30:44):
the cost of a plasma treatment facility because these guys
have to treat the escaping smoke and everything anyway. So
all you're doing is adding actually a cleaner UM, a
cleaner fuel into the fire. It's going to ultimately be
cleaned down the line. Amazing. And then we talked about
UM sort of half joking, but they're serious about decontamination.
(31:07):
You know, if you have an outbreak on your farm
and you have a bunch of you know, sad, but
if you have a bunch of sick, disease dead livestock,
just bring out the h the P three thousand, throw
those cows in there bing bang boom. Yeah, maybe grind
them up first two? Yeah, why not? UM, yeah, and
(31:28):
you can do that with soil as well. Contaminated soil.
Got an e. Col Ii outbreak in your spinach field?
Not anymore? Yeah, a bunch of dirty humans not anymore,
storm in their medical waste to bio hazard. Nope, you've
got inert stuff. Ye, poopy cruise ship the P three
in there at once. I'm kidding about dirty humans. By
(31:50):
the way, I didn't even need to say that. I
don't think so. Okay, good, I hope not. You never know, buddy.
So that is plasma waste tree meant hopefully the wave
of the future. Yeah, we should title this something a
little sexier so people aren't like, yeah, there's a lot
of people, because it should Yeah, because then like even
(32:11):
people that are super into like green technologies will probably
be like, I want to learn about this weird science thing. Yeah,
how about plasma waste treatment? Please listen, Signed Josh and Chuck. Yeah,
I like it. It's a little clumsy, will work on it.
If you want to know more about plasma treatment facilities
or any of that stuff, you can type those words
(32:32):
in the search bar at how stuff works dot com.
And since Chuck said sexy, it's time for listener mail
I'm gonna call this you guys got Africa right. Thank you, Hey, guys,
listen to your podcast about female puberty, and it was
very impressed with the thoughtfulness and sensitivity in which you
explain things and gave advice. Um. By the way, we
(32:54):
heard from a lot of people on that, and thank you,
a lot of young women, a lot of grown women,
a lot of men and dad's uh. And that one
meant a lot. It was really good to get that
one right. I think, Um. The one thing that we
didn't quite get right that someone has pointed out more
than a few times is, uh, we said boy crazy
a lot, and we should have gone out of our
(33:14):
way to say, like, you know, you might also be
girl crazy, or you might not have sexual feelings and thoughts.
I wish we had that one back. I know. That's
you know, I'm giving us a break on that because
we people know how we feel about that stuff. We
just didn't pointed out as strong as we should have.
But that's I mean, that's how things change and improve
(33:34):
those you know what we're saying that now, young young
ladies out there going through puberty might like other girls.
You might not like boys or girls. Uh, And all
that's okay too, Yes, all right, thanks for saying that.
So back to this, Probably listen to about two hundred
or more of your podcasts. Man, you get a long
way to go, buddy, uh. And I'm always like, I'm
almost a three oh one, yeah, only five after that.
(33:59):
I'm always happy to are you guys, are your best
to be specific when you make references to events in
countries or geographic regions. What I mean by this is
you don't generalize like a lot of people do and
say crap, like in Africa they blah blah blah, or
in Europe it's normal to blah blah blah. When you
got to the part of your latest show where you
talk about female puberty rights, I was elated to hear
(34:20):
you being careful not to say in Ghana, there is
a village where dot dot dot. The reason for my
reaction is that I've lived in the US for twenty years,
but I'm from Ghana. There at least twenty distinct ethnic
groups and languages in Ghana alone, and I know for
a fact that the ritual you described is not done
in all of them. In fact, I've heard of it,
but I don't think it happens anymore. By the way,
the official language in Ghana is English, so we are
(34:42):
able to communicate with each other. Nothing irritates US Africans
more than to hear someone started sentence within Africa. I
bet it's continent that huge, because no one says well
in North America. No that they do say like in
the US. But it's a confederation of like associated states
(35:03):
in Africa. It's like, yeah, you're you're putting the whole
continent and it's all these different countries with all these
different cultures. Yeah, it's amazing. So thanks guys for being
the thoughtful and professional. Eric from Seattle by way of gone,
I guess yeah, thanks a lot er appreciate that. Thank
you Greedy. If you want to get in touch with this,
whether to give us big ups or pooh pooh us
(35:27):
or um submit some sort of neutral statement that's fact based,
who knows a lot. Yeah, you can tweet to us
at s y s K podcast. You can join us
on Facebook, dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know. You
can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how
Stuff Works dot com, and as always, joined us at
our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot Com.
(35:52):
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Chuck Bryant
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