Plasma Gasification: From a Dirty City to a Heavenly Place and from Waste Solids to Clean Fuel Heta Gandhi

Plasma gasification is a technology which can process landfill waste to extract commodity recyclables and convert carbon-based materials into fuels. Utilizing this technology to convert municipal solid waste (MSW) to energy has great potential to operate more efficiently than other pyrolysis and combustion systems due to its high temperature, heat density, and nearly complete conversion of carbon-based materials to syngas, and non-organics to slag. Syngas is a simple fuel gas comprised of carbon monoxide and hydrogen that can be combusted directly or refined into higher-grade fuels and chemicals. Slag is a glass-like substance which is the cooled remains of the melted waste; it is tightly bound, safe and suitable for use as a construction material. Plasma torch technology has proven reliable at destroying hazardous waste and can help transform environmental liabilities into renewable energy assets.There is a plasma gasification plant in Utashinai, Japan. It is the largest plasma gasification plant in the world and was built by Hitachi Metals Ltd. using Westinghouse plasma corporation plasma gasification process. The plant takes up 300 tonnes per day of MSW as feedstock and produces 7.9MW of energy, of which 3.6MW is used by the plant and the rest is sent to a central processing grid which can be used to provide a part of the power required by the city or for any other constructive purpose. Based on the model of Japan’s plasma gasification plant, in this paper an attempt has been made to offer a lasting environment friendly solution to Mumbai’s twin problems of tonnes of daily waste generation an