Syngas generation from organic waste with plasma steam reforming

A plasma steam reforming system to process waste is in the process of being set up at the University of California, Merced. The proposed concept will use two different plasma regimes, i.e. glow discharge and arc torches to process a percentage of the total liquid waste stream generated at the campus together with shredded local organic solid waste. One of the main advantages of the plasma technology to be utilized is that it uses graphite electrodes that can be fed to the reactor to achieve continuous operation, thus, electrode or nozzle life is not a concern. The waste to energy conversion process consists of two stages, one where a mixture of steam and hydrogen is generated from the liquid in a glow-discharge cell, and a second stage where the mixture of exhaust gases coming out of the first device are mixed with solid waste in a reactor operating in steam reforming mode interacting with a plasma torch to generate high-quality syngas. In this paper, the results of a thermodynamic model developed for the two stages are shown. The syngas composition obtained indicates that the fraction of CO₂ present decreases with increasing temperature and the molar fractions of hydrogen and carbon monoxide become dominant. The fraction of water vapour present in the product gases coming out of the second stage needs to be condensed before the syngas can be utilized in a prime mover.