School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), San 31 Hyoja-dong Nam-gu Pohang 790-600, Republic of Korea.
Environ Sci Technol. 2010 Sep 1;44(17):6680-4. doi: 10.1021/es101244u.
Thermal plasma treatment has been regarded as a viable alternative for the treatment of highly toxic wastes, such as incinerator residues, radioactive wastes, and medical wastes. Therefore, a gasification/vitrification unit for the direct treatment of municipal solid waste (MSW), with a capacity of 10 tons/day, was developed using an integrated furnace equipped with two nontransferred thermal plasma torches. The overall process, as well as the analysis of byproducts and energy balance, has been presented in this paper to assess the performance of this technology. It was successfully demonstrated that the thermal plasma process converted MSW into innocuous slag, with much lower levels of environmental air pollutant emissions and the syngas having a utility value as energy sources (287 Nm3/MSW-ton for H2 and 395 Nm3/MSW-ton for CO), using 1.14 MWh/MSW-ton of electricity (thermal plasma torch (0.817 MWh/MSW-ton)+utilities (0.322 MWh/MSW-ton)) and 7.37 Nm3/MSW-ton of liquefied petroleum gas.
热等离子体处理技术被认为是处理高毒性废物（如焚烧炉残渣、放射性废物和医疗废物）的可行方法。因此，采用配备两个非转移热等离子体炬的集成炉，开发了一种用于直接处理城市固体废物（MSW）的气化/玻璃化装置，处理能力为 10 吨/天。本文介绍了整个工艺以及副产物和能量平衡的分析，以评估该技术的性能。成功地证明了热等离子体工艺将 MSW 转化为无害的炉渣，同时大大降低了环境空气污染物的排放水平，并且合成气具有作为能源的实用价值（H2 为 287 Nm3/MSW-吨，CO 为 395 Nm3/MSW-吨），使用 1.14 MWh/MSW-吨的电力（热等离子体炬（0.817 MWh/MSW-吨）+公用事业（0.322 MWh/MSW-吨））和 7.37 Nm3/MSW-吨的液化石油气。
