Best Use For Our Garbage?

I would rather give tax breaks to the energy company described below than all those oil-extraction corporations. Hope they are not bullshiting.
Here’s an excerpt from WIRED articles:

“FORT PIERCE, Florida — A Florida county has grand plans to ditch its dump, generate electricity and help build roads — all by vaporizing garbage at temperatures hotter than parts of the sun.

The $425 million facility expected to be built in St. Lucie County will use lightning-like plasma arcs to turn trash into gas and rock-like material. It will be the first such plant in the nation operating on such a massive scale and the largest in the world.

Supporters say the process is cleaner than traditional trash incineration, though skeptics question whether the technology can meet the lofty expectations.

The 100,000-square-foot plant, slated to be operational in two years, is expected to vaporize 3,000 tons of garbage a day. County officials estimate their entire landfill — 4.3 million tons of trash collected since 1978 — will be gone in 18 years.

No byproduct will go unused, according to Geoplasma, the Atlanta-based company building and paying for the plant.

Synthetic, combustible gas produced in the process will be used to run turbines to create electricity — about 120 megawatts a day — that will be sold back to the grid. The facility will operate on about a third of the power it generates, free from outside electricity.

About 80,000 pounds of steam per day will be sold to a neighboring Tropicana Products facility to power the juice plant’s turbines.

Sludge from the county’s wastewater treatment plant will be vaporized, and a material created from melted organic matter — up to 600 tons a day — will be hardened into slag, and sold for use in road and construction projects.”

Full Article Here:
http://www.wired.com/news/wireservice/0,71757-0.html?tw=wn_index_9

Companys’ Site:
http://www.geoplasma.com/

Posted on September 18, 2006 in Environment, News

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