Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette,
Speaker 1: and I am an editor here at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. Sitting across from me, as he always does,
Speaker 1: is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. He who holds the spice
Speaker 1: controls the galaxy. Oh Dune. Yeah, there you go. Nice
Speaker 1: that that and we're done today. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: about something that's inspired by a little listener mail. This
Speaker 1: listener mail comes from Damon. Damon says, I was just
Speaker 1: wondering how plasma cutter works. Is it something to do
Speaker 1: with electricity? Yours truly, Damon, Damon. That was very nice
Speaker 1: and short and to the point. So we're going to
Speaker 1: answer your question. Yes, we're gonna go into more detailed
Speaker 1: than just the fact that yes, it does use electricity.
Speaker 1: So plasma cutters are a it's just one um one
Speaker 1: use for a plasma torch, and a plasma torch is
Speaker 1: a device that uses a usually an inert gas uh
Speaker 1: pressurized pushed through a nozzle and at the nozzle, there's
Speaker 1: an electrode that's shooting off pretty powerful electricity, which turns
Speaker 1: the gas into what is called the fourth state of
Speaker 1: matter plasma. Oh wait, no, here in my notes and
Speaker 1: says there are five states and manners solid liquid, gas,
Speaker 1: plasma and New Hampshire. Well there you go. That's the
Speaker 1: fourth state, the fifth state matter. Oh my gosh, you
Speaker 1: get to answer that, listener mail, that's what you have
Speaker 1: just earned for yourself, matter in New Hampshire. Moving on,
Speaker 1: So plasma. Plasma is an ionized gas. We've talked about
Speaker 1: it before on this podcast because it does factor into
Speaker 1: other technologies. But it's a it's a gas that has
Speaker 1: free roaming electrons, which means that it conducts electricity. Um.
Speaker 1: It also can quote unquote burn really really hot. Yes,
Speaker 1: as a matter of fact, hotter than the surface of
Speaker 1: the sun. Yes, we're talking like six thousand degrees celsius.
Speaker 1: That's um. That's pretty toasty. And uh, the it turns
Speaker 1: out this is really really handy for things like cutting
Speaker 1: through material or um. We're going to get into a
Speaker 1: really cool application in a minute about how you can
Speaker 1: use a plasma torch to turn garbage into energy. Yes,
Speaker 1: but let's start's start off slow here. Um, So you're
Speaker 1: using this ionized gas. It's burning at this really high temperature.
Speaker 1: It actually breaks stuff down in a process that we
Speaker 1: call molecular dissociation, which literally means that it's starts to
Speaker 1: break down the molecules because the energy that they absorb
Speaker 1: is so great the molecular bonds can no longer hold, right,
Speaker 1: so it comes apart, right because normally there is a
Speaker 1: cloud of electrons uh, circling the nucleus of the atom.
Speaker 1: And at that at that point, the electrons are more
Speaker 1: loosely bound and sometimes split off, right, and you end
Speaker 1: up with with much more basic particles as opposed to molecules.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't use combustion, so that's not it's not
Speaker 1: burning like a traditional torch. Uh. You know, a traditional torch,
Speaker 1: you need a fuel, you need heat, and you need air, yeah, oxygen,
Speaker 1: and you don't need oxygen for uh, for a plasma
Speaker 1: torch to work. Um. And so it's it's using a
Speaker 1: it's using heat in a process that we call pyrolysis.
Speaker 1: All right, now this is when technically now this is
Speaker 1: for organic manner, This is not for inorganic matter. Different
Speaker 1: thing entirely right. So pyrolysis UH is a preceived process
Speaker 1: in which organic matter breaks down and decomposes. Now when
Speaker 1: you apply a plasma torch to organic matter, pyrolysis happens um,
Speaker 1: let's say, on an accelerated basis, like practically instantaneous as
Speaker 1: opposed to taking years and years and years UM. So
Speaker 1: this means that plasma torches are very useful for lots
Speaker 1: of different environments. For example, underwater, you could use a
Speaker 1: plasma torch because again you're just shooting out gas and
Speaker 1: you're injecting it with electrons essentially, So you could use
Speaker 1: a plasma torch to cut through material underwater and not
Speaker 1: have to worry about the fact that oxygen. You know,
Speaker 1: you have a real hard time lighting a traditional torch
Speaker 1: on the water um. And it's really good for cutting
Speaker 1: through pretty much anything. I mean, at that temperature, it's
Speaker 1: gonna managed to make its way through tons and tons
Speaker 1: of different stuff. So we do find them very useful
Speaker 1: in lots of different applications. And the one that I
Speaker 1: really wanted to talk about, which really it goes beyond
Speaker 1: the plasma cutters, which you know, that's interesting enough, but
Speaker 1: I really wanted to talk about plasma waste converters. Okay,
Speaker 1: do you want to just jump into that then sure,
Speaker 1: Okay we can. I mean unless you had something more
Speaker 1: to say specifically about plasma cutters. Well, no, I was
Speaker 1: I was going to bring up when we started to
Speaker 1: learn about them, because it really wasn't even all that
Speaker 1: long ago during World War Two that they discovered that
Speaker 1: this could be, that this could be possible. Um. Basically
Speaker 1: what was going on was, uh, you know, the American
Speaker 1: war effort required a lot of different kinds of machinery
Speaker 1: to be fabricated very quickly, and they discovered this, uh,
Speaker 1: this arc process that we've been describing basically by uh,
Speaker 1: you know, just the techniques they were using then too.
Speaker 1: They started off with you know, arc welding, and uh
Speaker 1: they were able to uh they realized that you know,
Speaker 1: charging the gas with the aren't made a barrier around
Speaker 1: where the weld was UM, and it predicted it from oxidizing,
Speaker 1: which is very useful. UM. And uh it also made
Speaker 1: very very clean cuts, which is why they they're using
Speaker 1: it for uh plasma torches or using plasma torches for
Speaker 1: you know, cutting purposes. And then um, you know, in
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties. Basically what would happen is, uh they
Speaker 1: realized that once you speed up the flow of gas
Speaker 1: um and cutting down the size of the hole through
Speaker 1: which it is being released, you could it would keep
Speaker 1: higher temperatures than any other type of of welder. And um,
Speaker 1: you know, that's exactly when they started cutting was because
Speaker 1: you know, they discovered the properties of using this method
Speaker 1: uh in in the welding process. But then once they
Speaker 1: started experimenting with it some more and found out that
Speaker 1: it makes it's awesome for cutting, and it can cut
Speaker 1: through all kinds of different heavy duty metals that you
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to cut so finely using any other process,
Speaker 1: and so simply really um so that's why it's so
Speaker 1: so awesome for that. I just wanted to touch on
Speaker 1: the history of it a little bit because, um, you know,
Speaker 1: this is not something we've known about for you know,
Speaker 1: a long time like some of the other technologies we
Speaker 1: talk about. Sure, and it's only been a couple of
Speaker 1: decades since someone thought to to apply it to waste management. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's even newer. So I'm sure you're all aware that
Speaker 1: that waste management is a huge issue. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's a problem in a lot of different communities. We
Speaker 1: talk about pollution, we talk about the the need to
Speaker 1: create large landfills dumping sites. Then of course there are
Speaker 1: the big dumping sites out in the ocean, so we
Speaker 1: don't really like to think about, but they're out there. Um.
Speaker 1: And we've you know, people have tried to come up
Speaker 1: with lots of different ways of solving this problem, everything
Speaker 1: from just cutting down the amount of waste we generate,
Speaker 1: which you know, that's part of it, that's important, big
Speaker 1: part of it. But but we're getting new people every day,
Speaker 1: and even if you start cutting back the amount of
Speaker 1: materials you're you're consuming, the number of people that are
Speaker 1: added to the planet kind of makes that a very
Speaker 1: slow process. I mean, eventually it all catches up to
Speaker 1: you again. So there are other things you can look at,
Speaker 1: like you know that people have tried to burn trash,
Speaker 1: but of course that often will generate other kinds of pollution,
Speaker 1: including pollutants that will eventually cause acid rain in the future. Um,
Speaker 1: and that's clearly not good either. And then there are other,
Speaker 1: you know, semi outlandish proposals like shooting it off into
Speaker 1: space so that we you know, we stop polluting the Earth.
Speaker 1: We'll just start polluting space everything else not Granted, space
Speaker 1: is big, I mean really big for your stuff. There's
Speaker 1: always space, and at any rate, assuming you don't want
Speaker 1: to just you know, find new places to throw st
Speaker 1: of a way, you want to find a way of
Speaker 1: getting rid of it. And that's where plasma waiste converters
Speaker 1: come in. Now, a plasma waist converter has at its
Speaker 1: heart a plasma torch. Yeah. Now the plasma torch is
Speaker 1: inside a furnace. Uh. And inside that furnace, what you
Speaker 1: do is you you dump garbage and there Uh. Normally
Speaker 1: the garbage has to go through a process where it
Speaker 1: gets crunched up into smaller bits first. But once it
Speaker 1: goes into the furnace, the plasma torch causes it to
Speaker 1: to transform. And there are two different transformations that happen
Speaker 1: to the organic material. You have volatilization, also known as gasification.
Speaker 1: The organic material gets turned into gases, synthetic gases or
Speaker 1: sin gas, right, and then you've got the inorganic compounds.
Speaker 1: So anything that's not carbon based, essentially is what you're
Speaker 1: talking about here. Um, it becomes vitrified, turns into slag.
Speaker 1: It kind of looks like law. When it's coming out
Speaker 1: of a plasma waste converter, you know, it's a bright
Speaker 1: reddish orange glowing liquid material and as it cools, it
Speaker 1: becomes if you were to allow it to air cool,
Speaker 1: it turns into this kind of hard, glassy, rocky substance.
Speaker 1: It kind of looks like um, obsidian lava connection Again, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks a lot like obsidian. So if you've ever
Speaker 1: seen a volcanic rock, that's a lot like what the
Speaker 1: the the cooled version of slag from a plasma waste
Speaker 1: converter looks like and um. So that's so you've got
Speaker 1: the volatilized material and the vitrified material. And uh, actually,
Speaker 1: depending on how you cool that slag, it can turn
Speaker 1: into many different formats. Like air cooled, it looks like
Speaker 1: those little rocks like I was mentioning. If you cool
Speaker 1: it with water, it turns into these little pebbles. So
Speaker 1: they don't like it doesn't look like a little rock.
Speaker 1: It doesn't like rocks is in you know, jagged edges
Speaker 1: or anything like that. It's just it's almost like a
Speaker 1: fine sand. And then if you blow compressed air through it,
Speaker 1: which I would not recommend anyone try to do if
Speaker 1: they had somehow managed to build a plasma waist converter,
Speaker 1: because it's scary to look at. I was I was
Speaker 1: going to say, how many, just how many of our
Speaker 1: listeners do you think actually have a plasma waste converter
Speaker 1: in their backyard? You know? I mean, it's good that
Speaker 1: you're warning pits, but I will admit it's a hell
Speaker 1: of a do it yourself project. Okay, but you know,
Speaker 1: just saying. But anyway, if you were to somehow find
Speaker 1: a way where you could blow compressed air through the
Speaker 1: stream up slag as it's coming out of the plasma
Speaker 1: waste converter, it turns into this very very thin material
Speaker 1: almost feels kind of like cotton or insulation, and uh
Speaker 1: it's called rock wool and um it's I actually saw
Speaker 1: a video of this stuff being made. It's just these
Speaker 1: two guys standing around. Guy from Georgia Tech actually someone
Speaker 1: I chatted with quite a bit when I was writing
Speaker 1: an article about this um. But the video of him
Speaker 1: blowing compressed air through this molten stream of material was
Speaker 1: really impressive and kind of scary because it's just these
Speaker 1: two guys standing there building compressed air through material that's
Speaker 1: so hot that it would do you serious arm if
Speaker 1: you touched it. Right. Um, but but it turns into
Speaker 1: rock wall, which turns out to be a really good
Speaker 1: insulator and uh and could be a way of making
Speaker 1: money off plasma waste converters. But well, we'll talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more about how they can generate in cash.
Speaker 1: So anyway you get this, you put the garbage through
Speaker 1: this stuff, those are the problems. You get the end
Speaker 1: gas and the slag, and you end up reducing the
Speaker 1: amount of weight and space of that garbage significantly. One
Speaker 1: other benefit to using plasma waste converter to get rid
Speaker 1: of your stuff is that, uh, you can treat all
Speaker 1: kinds of garbage in there that you might not otherwise
Speaker 1: want buried in landfills that because of uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it could be dangerou For example, medical waste which could
Speaker 1: be infectious. Um. Basically, medical waste can be treated in
Speaker 1: a plasma waste converter and it you know it's inert
Speaker 1: once it's done, because you know it it breaks materials
Speaker 1: down to the point where they are no longer what
Speaker 1: they once were, and you know it's no longer dangerous. However,
Speaker 1: there are limits to how not dangerous things can be.
Speaker 1: One of the things that you cannot just grab a
Speaker 1: bucket and throw into the plasma waste converter is spent
Speaker 1: nuclear rods. That is what they call in scientific terms bad.
Speaker 1: So if you are to do it yourself er and
Speaker 1: you've built your plasma wast converter in your backyard, not
Speaker 1: only should you not blow compressed air through the slag,
Speaker 1: but also please don't put any spent nuclear rods in there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's be responsible. Okay. Then, so you know I mentioned
Speaker 1: that the weight and the volume are reduced. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: actually reduced by a very significant amount. I mean, you
Speaker 1: granted a lot of the stuff is being turned into gas,
Speaker 1: and then a lot of it is being turned into
Speaker 1: the slag, and the slag is much more dense than
Speaker 1: the original material usually that you put through this. So
Speaker 1: in general, uh, the weight of the slag ends up
Speaker 1: being about the weight of the original waste you put
Speaker 1: in there, and the volume is five cent so in
Speaker 1: other words, it takes up much less space. It's very dense.
Speaker 1: Um Often the slag, if it's dried so that becomes
Speaker 1: the rocky substance, could be used in in building materials,
Speaker 1: so like concrete or even just just using it as
Speaker 1: you know gravel really. Um. But the neat thing about
Speaker 1: these these plasma waste converters, now there are on a
Speaker 1: whole lot of them out there right now, there's only
Speaker 1: a few. There's a couple in Japan, and there's one
Speaker 1: that was being built in Florida. I actually haven't looked
Speaker 1: to see how the progress has gone with that one.
Speaker 1: It should have been operational by now. Um. But these
Speaker 1: the really cool thing about these is that not only
Speaker 1: would they eventually be able to taken all the incoming
Speaker 1: garbage coming into the landfill to process, but some of
Speaker 1: them operated such a huge capacity We're talking thousands of
Speaker 1: tons of garbage every day that not only could they
Speaker 1: handle all the incoming garbage, but could actually make a
Speaker 1: dent in the existing garbage at the landfill. Why are
Speaker 1: you going around denting garbage? I'm just pointing out that
Speaker 1: if we were to invest in this technology, eventually we
Speaker 1: could reclaim landfills. You could actually end up using them,
Speaker 1: uh enough so that the landfill is gone because you've
Speaker 1: you've consumed all the garbage in there. Now granted you
Speaker 1: would still be getting income and garbage, so it's not
Speaker 1: like you could just shut down. You know, you wouldn't.
Speaker 1: These these aren't like, uh, these aren't facilities that you
Speaker 1: you start up and then like twenty years later they're
Speaker 1: insignificant or uh are obsolete. No, you would still be
Speaker 1: taking incoming garbage and and still gasifying or vitrifying it.
Speaker 1: But you could reclaim all those landfills. That's pretty impressive
Speaker 1: considering that. Yeah, I mean, think about all the different
Speaker 1: communities that really fight to have to to to prevent
Speaker 1: landfills moving in. Um. It would be a good way
Speaker 1: to reclaim all that land use it for something else
Speaker 1: once it's cleaned. UM. And one of the really cool
Speaker 1: uh ideas I saw was too you know, if building
Speaker 1: a whole plasma waist center is too much money, um,
Speaker 1: you could always make a portable version. Oh yeah, this
Speaker 1: one's kind of scary. So here's the portable idea. The
Speaker 1: portable ideas that you go to a landfill, you drill
Speaker 1: down into the landfill, You insert into the hole a
Speaker 1: plasma torch on the end of a very long pole.
Speaker 1: You cap the hole at the top with a chamber
Speaker 1: that can capture escaping gases and yet light that sucker
Speaker 1: up seriously. Yeah, the landfill itself becomes the furnace for
Speaker 1: the plasma waste converter. Instead of building a furnace around
Speaker 1: the torch, the landfill itself access and furnace. And again,
Speaker 1: since you're not using combustion, you don't set fire to everything.
Speaker 1: There's no oxygen down there, at least not enough to
Speaker 1: actually create a fire. You're just you're consuming the landfill
Speaker 1: from the inside out. Yeah, I had no idea that
Speaker 1: was possible. Yeah, and I don't know that anyone's actually
Speaker 1: done it yet, but I saw a really cool presentation
Speaker 1: of it at Georgia Tech. Well. Um, I would also
Speaker 1: assume that since plasma cutters are available for people to buy,
Speaker 1: that this is something you really wouldn't want to try.
Speaker 1: That you theoretically could possibly do, you know, try to
Speaker 1: burn your own garbage. This would be seeingly bad idea.
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you exactly why it's a bad idea, Okay,
Speaker 1: beside the fact that you would possibly maim and or
Speaker 1: kill yourself. Yeah. Um, the gas that's given off the
Speaker 1: organic gas is not necessarily harmless. Now, we talked about
Speaker 1: how the materials get broken down into into very inert
Speaker 1: uh forms that mainly pertains to the slag, all right,
Speaker 1: so that when the slag comes out. One of the
Speaker 1: one of the big concerns about plasma waste converters is
Speaker 1: there's a lot of stuff that's in garbage. And there's mercury,
Speaker 1: there's lead, there's all these materials that eventually, you know
Speaker 1: that you only break them down so far, right, it's
Speaker 1: not like you can change the atoms. Um. Well, there
Speaker 1: was a worry that maybe the slag, the stuff could
Speaker 1: leach out of the slag get into the groundwater, and
Speaker 1: then you really just traded one problem for another, really
Speaker 1: serious problems. It looks like the material doesn't leach out anything,
Speaker 1: so that concern is gone. But stuff that turns into
Speaker 1: a gas that is toxic that remains. And it's only
Speaker 1: through a process of scrubbing that gas by putting it
Speaker 1: through a series of filters that you start taking out
Speaker 1: the harmful elements that could otherwise, uh, you know, cause
Speaker 1: serious damage and or kill people. Right, But it's it's
Speaker 1: mainly hydrogen and carbon monoxide off, but there's other stuff
Speaker 1: that can be carbon monoxide is not the healthiest stuff
Speaker 1: in the world either. But granted, you know a little
Speaker 1: whiff of it's not gonna instantaneously kill you, but yes
Speaker 1: it is. It is toxic, but yeah, that's why if
Speaker 1: you look at a full plasma waste converter system, there
Speaker 1: is a after you. After you've burned everything, there's still
Speaker 1: more to the system. Besides that. You usually have at
Speaker 1: the front of the system, you've got a conveyor belt
Speaker 1: carries the garbage to some grinders which grind it down
Speaker 1: into tiny bits. The tiny bits go into the furnace.
Speaker 1: The furnace burns that stuff up or melts it. I
Speaker 1: guess it's better way of putting it. Gasifies it. The
Speaker 1: gas goes into one part of the system, and the
Speaker 1: slag gets drained off. Now the gas usually we'll go
Speaker 1: through a cleaning system like I mentioned, where it will
Speaker 1: go through uh usually a spray of water which helps
Speaker 1: cool it down because this gas is incredibly hot after
Speaker 1: coming out of the furnace, and then it goes through
Speaker 1: it also scrubs the gas out of some pollutants and
Speaker 1: some particulates that are usually included in the gas. And
Speaker 1: then I will go through a filter that has um
Speaker 1: base in it. That's because the gas can have acidic
Speaker 1: elements in it and of course, when you mix an
Speaker 1: acid with the base, what do you get? Um? Shoot,
Speaker 1: pH seven? What is that? All right? It's neutral. But
Speaker 1: the more important thing is you get a salt basse
Speaker 1: plus acid equal salt. Um. That's okay, that's okay. The
Speaker 1: only reason I know it is because it's in the
Speaker 1: paragraph right in front of me. I forgot that. It's
Speaker 1: been a long time since I have had high school chemistry. Um.
Speaker 1: But yes, all of our listeners, of course we're screaming
Speaker 1: it out. I know they were, like them are in
Speaker 1: high school chemistry right now. Hey, guys, how's it going anyway? So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you get you get a neutral salt as a result,
Speaker 1: and uh, it goes through this cleaning process. It's usually
Speaker 1: several steps so that you have ended up with a
Speaker 1: synthetic gas that can actually be used as a fuel.
Speaker 1: So now we're getting to why our how a plasma
Speaker 1: waste converter can be profitable because we we know that
Speaker 1: environmentally this sounds like a fantastic idea. I mean, you
Speaker 1: get rid of all this garbage, you end up with
Speaker 1: some synthetic gas that can be used as a fuel.
Speaker 1: You end up with some slag that's a nert it
Speaker 1: sounds like a dream come true, right, more or less,
Speaker 1: I mean better than a bunch of big pile of
Speaker 1: garbage sitting out back. Right. So, but we know that
Speaker 1: the world revolves around making cash money pin Is Nickels, Dames, Cordas,
Speaker 1: dollar bills, hundred dollar bills. I bet no one got
Speaker 1: that reference anyway, So it is all about the Benjamin's.
Speaker 1: It is all about there you go, they'll get that reference.
Speaker 1: So anyway, the the the way that they can make
Speaker 1: cash is that one. There's this, uh, there's these this
Speaker 1: thing called tipping fees. Now. Tipping fees refer to the
Speaker 1: amount of money or the money that people have to
Speaker 1: pay in order to be able to um to cart
Speaker 1: garbage to a landfill. All right, well, right now, waste
Speaker 1: management's kind of almost a monopoly, so the landfills can
Speaker 1: pretty much dictate the tipping fees. There's no real competition there,
Speaker 1: there's no incentive to lower tipping fees. Populations are growing
Speaker 1: and consumption continues to grow. So really, uh, these these
Speaker 1: fees are getting higher and higher. It's getting more and
Speaker 1: more expensive to to just pay to have garbage ship
Speaker 1: to landfills with plasma waste converters, you're not worried about
Speaker 1: running out of space anymore. In fact, you're making space.
Speaker 1: So the tipping fees could be negotiated to a lower level.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that would make the waste management companies really happy. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: when it comes down to making money, and it's but
Speaker 1: then it's it's also stopped making money. It's also really
Speaker 1: hard for them to justify, uh, protesting, because protesting the
Speaker 1: fact that hey, we're saving the world but we're not
Speaker 1: making as much money doesn't get you a lot of sympathy,
Speaker 1: as it turns out. But anyway, so they could negotiate
Speaker 1: tipping fees, and tipping fees would be part of what
Speaker 1: how they would make money. They could also sell the slag, however,
Speaker 1: in whatever format, whether it was being used as a
Speaker 1: uh you know, like a gravel or a building material,
Speaker 1: or if they were making rock wool, they could sell
Speaker 1: it like installation. It's apparently extremely effective as installation um.
Speaker 1: And then with the gas, they could actually generate enough
Speaker 1: gas from destroying this garbage to create fuel to run
Speaker 1: the facility itself. So in that sense they don't need
Speaker 1: to consume power from the power grid, and in fact
Speaker 1: they could potentially create enough gas to sell power back
Speaker 1: to the power grid. That would be nice because you
Speaker 1: would uh generate this gas, you could run a generator
Speaker 1: and then generate electricity and add it to the power grid. Um.
Speaker 1: A lot of people have asked me in the past,
Speaker 1: does this mean that it's some sort of magical kind
Speaker 1: of of way of generating energy, because you think about that,
Speaker 1: sounds like how can something generate more energy than it
Speaker 1: takes to run it? Um. The answer to that is
Speaker 1: it's it's using fuel. It's just all all it's doing
Speaker 1: is converting fuel from one format into another. Um, it's
Speaker 1: not you know, it's not like a perpetual motion machine.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like the idea of well, if an
Speaker 1: oil drill consumed more energy than it generated by gathering fuel,
Speaker 1: it would make no sense to drill for oil, right,
Speaker 1: because what you do, think, yeah, because you'd have to
Speaker 1: pour more energy into the drill then you would get
Speaker 1: out of the fuel your Right, it's the same sort
Speaker 1: of thing. Think of it like an oil drill. It's
Speaker 1: not like a perpetual motion machine. It's more like an
Speaker 1: oil drill because you're gathering fuel up from garbage. Right.
Speaker 1: So um, yeah, that's the way that they can make money. Now,
Speaker 1: getting the initial investment to build one of these things
Speaker 1: has been tricky because they are expensive. How could that
Speaker 1: possibly be? So? Yeah, well, mostly because they're all customized. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. Um. One of the things in the article
Speaker 1: on on plasma waste converters it is the fact that
Speaker 1: every single plant that there is in existence now is
Speaker 1: custom so it's all unique. Yeah. And it turns out
Speaker 1: designing a facility from the ground up costs lots of money.
Speaker 1: Does seem pricey? Yes? Yeah, And um, well I'm sure
Speaker 1: you could get some really nice parts with clean edges
Speaker 1: if you use plasmic cutters. Well. And it's also a
Speaker 1: matter of educating the communities about what the plasma waste
Speaker 1: converters doing, the benefits of it, and any potential drawbacks,
Speaker 1: because you have to be completely upfront about that. I mean,
Speaker 1: otherwise people are gonna worry about it. I mean, let's
Speaker 1: put it this way. If you were told, like if
Speaker 1: you had no knowledge of plasma waste converters at all,
Speaker 1: and you were told, hey, I want to build this
Speaker 1: facility that at its heart is going to have a
Speaker 1: torch that burns bright heart hotter than the surface of
Speaker 1: the sun. It's going to give off gas which could
Speaker 1: potentially kill you, and molten slag um, And we're just
Speaker 1: gonna throw your garbage in there. You all right with that?
Speaker 1: You might have a little pause for right, I mean,
Speaker 1: unless you just had lots of garbage and you're like, dude,
Speaker 1: anything to get rid of this stuff. Yes, but yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's it's a little intimidating at first too. It
Speaker 1: takes a little time to understand this. But just to
Speaker 1: give one last little bit of of um kind of statistics.
Speaker 1: This is what Chuck would do if he were here. Ah,
Speaker 1: he's the statistic guy. Uh. The the proposed facility in
Speaker 1: flow its supposed to be at St. Lucy County. Like
Speaker 1: I said, I hadn't looked to see I should have
Speaker 1: checked to see if they had built it and should
Speaker 1: be up and running by now. Um. But the idea
Speaker 1: was that it would be able to process up to
Speaker 1: a thousand tons of garbage each day and generate sixty
Speaker 1: seven megawatt hours of power each day with a net
Speaker 1: output of thirty three megawatt hours because the course has
Speaker 1: to consume some to keep going um, and that it
Speaker 1: could eventually scale up to three thousand tons of ways
Speaker 1: per day by adding a couple of modular units to
Speaker 1: the already existing ones, and that um that potentially it
Speaker 1: would be able to completely eliminate the landfill in less
Speaker 1: than two decades and it could power thousand homes. Serious, Yeah,
Speaker 1: just from garbage. So that's pretty cool, I think. Okay, so,
Speaker 1: our our sister site Tree Hugger says that the plant
Speaker 1: in St. Lucy County, Florida is expected to be online
Speaker 1: by not the future, but it hasn't happened yet. Well,
Speaker 1: I look forward to reading more about that because I
Speaker 1: find the whole the whole model to be fascinating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty neat and potentially a real game changer, but
Speaker 1: you definitely don't want to be right next to it. Well,
Speaker 1: I definitely don't want to be in the furnace. That
Speaker 1: wouldn't be in there for very long. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: just wonder. I imagine you'd probably have to stay pretty
Speaker 1: far away from it. I'm sure they have insulation, but yes,
Speaker 1: actually they are very heavily insulated. They have water cooling
Speaker 1: systems that run through Because you think about that, like
Speaker 1: if it burtens hotter than the surface of the sun.
Speaker 1: What the heck could withstand that kind of heat? You know,
Speaker 1: just just sort of a trivia fact really, but something
Speaker 1: that was in the article we didn't I don't think
Speaker 1: you mentioned the slag, which isn't immediately drained off, can
Speaker 1: actually help continue to heat the furnace. Yes, which is
Speaker 1: which is also pretty neat because once it's converted, it's
Speaker 1: already producing energy heat energy, and it's well producing it,
Speaker 1: it's maintaining and I guess, and actually the heat itself
Speaker 1: can be recaptured and used to generate or to turn well,
Speaker 1: it ends up converting water into steam, which then turns turbines,
Speaker 1: which rates energy electricity specifically. And uh so, yeah, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of different ways that you could create
Speaker 1: electricity using this system, all by just you know, getting
Speaker 1: rid of some garbage. And we don't have too much
Speaker 1: of that running around anyway. We try to trim it
Speaker 1: from this podcast whenever possible. Well, that's that's why I've
Speaker 1: been missing from the last six anyway, Well I have,
Speaker 1: I have. Now we've we've done plasma cutters. We talked
Speaker 1: about plasma waste converters. I want to move on to
Speaker 1: a second round of listener mail now, This listener mail
Speaker 1: specifically comes from Brian, although we received other people asking
Speaker 1: the same question, including Dante, so I wanted to give
Speaker 1: a shout out to both of them. The question is
Speaker 1: you spoke a lot about how listening to music with
Speaker 1: earbuds can lead to hear loss if volume is too high.
Speaker 1: But what about listening to speech like the tech stuff podcast.
Speaker 1: Oh well, I may lose hearing, but I would gain
Speaker 1: smarts Brian. Yes, Brian, any loud noise, especially a sustained
Speaker 1: loud noise, even even if there are short breaks like
Speaker 1: in speech, if you listen to it over a stretch
Speaker 1: of time, like for instance, the typical tech stuff podcast,
Speaker 1: you can cause hearing damage. Does not have to be music,
Speaker 1: does not have to be a C d C, does
Speaker 1: not have to be a jackhammer or jet engine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: loud noise bad for years, right, So just in general,
Speaker 1: just try and keep those ears safe. Okay, And if
Speaker 1: any of you have any questions, comments, you have a
Speaker 1: topic you want to suggest, you just want to say hello,
Speaker 1: you can write us. Our address is tech stuff at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com and Chris and I will
Speaker 1: taught you again really soon. If you're a tech stuff
Speaker 1: and be sure to check us out on Twitter or
Speaker 1: tech Stuff hs WSR handle, and you can also find
Speaker 1: us on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash tech Stuff
Speaker 1: h s W. For more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics, visit how Stuff Works dot com and be
Speaker 1: sure to check out the new tech Stuff blog now
Speaker 1: on the House Stuff Works homepage, brought to you by
Speaker 1: the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you