Plasma waste converters to be installed in City of David, Panama

Startech Environmental Corporation (BULLETIN BOARD: STHK) has signed a contract to build a second waste processing plant in Panama using plasma technology.

The new facility is to process 200 tons per day, starting in 2008, near City of David in Panama. 

This new contract is in addition to another facility the company has in Las Tablas, Panama. The David facility, although larger than the Las Tablas facility, will also be processing municipal solid waste and producing "green electrical power."

Startech's Plasma Converter System destroys wastes, no matter how hazardous or lethal, and turns them into useful valuable products, the company said. It destroys municipal solid waste, organics and inorganics, solids, liquids and gases, hazardous and non-hazardous waste, industrial and other specialty wastes while converting many of them into commodity products including metals and synthetic gas.

Among the commercial uses for the gas is in producing "green electrical power," Gas-To-Liquid (GTL) fuels such as ethanol, synthetic diesel fuel and other higher alcohol fuels, the company said. Hydrogen, for use and sale, can also be separated and recovered from the PCG synthesis gas mixture.

For more details on how plasma systems help convert waste into energy and other resources, see the Cleantech Group's How to up your biodiesel production: torch it.