Plasco\'s Proposed LA Site designed by Canadian Architect Douglas CardinalWell, it’s nice to see Canada leading the way in terms of gasification plants in North America.  While the tech is that all that new, it hasn’t really caught on outside of Europe until now.   PlascoEnergy Group constructed the first demo site in Ottawa back in 2006 and is now in the process of constructing the permanent second site. 

The site has some amazing potential and was actually built on an existing landfill site.  Here is a bit more information on the Ottawa site from Plasco’s site: “The demonstration facility has a very small footprint (three acres) and was built on existing landfill space. The facility is permitted to convert 85 tonnes of solid waste per day to energy using PlascoEnergy’s conversion technology. At that rate a net amount of 4 MW of electricity—enough to power 3,600 homes—will be fed into the Ontario energy grid.

Construction was completed in June 2007 and commissioning began in July 2007 with the first processing of surrogate waste occurring on July 19, 2007. There are no air emissions from the processing of waste into synthetic gas and only minimum (well below the Ontario regulated limits) air emissions from the power generation process. The facility is designed to operate on a 24-hour basis, 340 days per year with a two-year permitted operating term.”

MIT’s Technology Review site provides a nice explanation of how this tech works, while the EPA’s site provides some other environmental data (although not as current).  While I don’t know everything about this tech, I am interested to hear opinions and comments from others on this type of approach to waste disposal and energy generation.  There seems to be a growing demand within North America now with new plants going up in Hawaii and and Pennsylvania. 

Here is the Ottawa specific site with more details and information: http://www.zerowasteottawa.com/en/