2.2. Waste Management by Plasma Gasification
Plasma gasification refers to a range of techniques that utilize plasma torches or plasma arcs to
generate extreme temperatures that are particularly effective for highly efficient gasification. Solid waste
contains organic content metallic particles, inorganic contents. Plasma gasification proves to be one of the
most efficient methods for treating all type of solid waste without segregating them. It involves
pulverizing of solid waste through crusher’s thereby increasing surface area for pyrolysis. The bundles of
pulverized solid waste are charged into plasma gasifier furnace using conveyer belt arrangement. The
plasma produced by high intensity current (approx. 60 Volt & 350 Amp) (8) electrodes produces
temperature approx 10000 degree Fahrenheit which break downs solid waste into elemental form.
The major advantage of using pyrolysis process is that the metallic particles do not evaporate as in the
case of combustion where oxygen is employed which forms metal oxide which is fatal to further
proceeding of the process. As explained in the Fig. 2, due to pyrolysis thermal cracking takes place as a
result metallic parts gets converted into vitreous form which is collected by density difference method