Plasma Gasification

Image via Wikipedia

What is Plasma Gasification?
In plasma gasification, fuel or waste is fed to a reactor vessel where an electrically generated plasma at a temperature of 20,000 C° is present. When the fuel or waste is exposed to the plasma it is heated to a very high temperature (>2,000C°), which causes the organic compounds in the fuel or waste to dissociate into very simple molecules such as hydrogen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, water vapour and methane. These simple molecules, that are all gases, are allowed to continuously flow from the reactor to gas cooling and cleaning equipment. Ash and other inorganic material present in the fuel or waste is melted down to a complex liquid silicate that flows to the bottom of the reaction vessel.

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Idea behind Gasification Furnaces

Image by jamelah via Flickr
Different Gasification images
Instead of using gas or gel fuel, these stoves burn scrap wood, grains and pellets. Most pellets are made from 100% recycled sawdust, but can also be made from wood chips, bark, agricultural crop waste, recycled paper or other organic materials.
Extremely efficient, dust free, smokeless with virtually free of toxins, today’s stoves burn much cleaner than older models. They’re easy to use and are better for the environment than gas, propane or oil furnaces. In addition, they are less costly to run.
Unlike combustion processes, gasification is an “oxygen-starving” process that converts solid fuels such as biomass, pellets, etc. into gaseous fuels. Gasification is uniquely capable of producing not only heat and power, but also can be used with downstream catalysts to convert the syngas to liquid fuels/chemicals like diesel, ethanol and hydrogen gas for fuel cell applications.
Please refer to this link to learn more about Gasification technologies and processes.

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