Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Progress in Energy and Combustion Science

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/pecs

Progress in waste utilization via thermal plasma

Vineet Singh Sikarwar a,b,c,∗, Milan Hrabovský a, Guido Van Oost d,e,f, Michael Pohořelý b,g,
Michal Jeremiáš a
a
Institute of Plasma Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, v. v. i., Za Slovankou 1782/3, 182 00 Prague 8, Czech Republic
b
Department of Power Engineering, University of Chemistry and Technology, Technická 5, 166 28 Prague 6, Czech Republic
c
Department of Green Chemistry and Technology, Ghent University, 9000 Ghent, Belgium
d
Department of Applied Physics, Ghent University, 9000 Ghent, Belgium
e
National Research Nuclear University “MEPHI”, Moscow, Russia
f
National Research University “Moscow Power Engineering Institute, MPEI”, Moscow, Russia
g
Institute of Chemical Process Fundamentals of the Czech Academy of Sciences, v. v. i., Rozvojová 135, 165 02 Prague 6, Czech Republic

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: As the world races toward its urban future, the quantity of wastes, one of the vital by-products of an en-
Received 30 October 2019 hancement in the standards of living, is exponentially rising. The treatment of wastes employing plasma
Accepted 10 July 2020
is an upcoming area of research and is globally used for the simultaneous processing of diverse wastes
coupled with the recovery of energy and materials. Ground-breaking and cost-effective thermal plasma
Keywords: technologies with high efficiencies are a prerequisite for the growth of this technology. This paper deliv-
Energy & material recovery ers an evaluation of the fundamentals such as the generation and characteristics of the thermal plasma
Environmental impact along with the various types of wastes treatable by thermal plasma and the related issues. Furthermore,
Modeling the authors discuss different types of advanced technologies as well as the material and energy recovery
Thermal plasma
techniques and their present status worldwide, at lab-scale and industrial scale. The application of dif-
Waste valorization
ferent thermal plasma technologies is discussed as a means to promote this technology into alternative
applications, which require higher flexibility and greater efficiency. Mathematical modeling studies are
also assessed with an objective to derive ideal conditions and permissible limits for the reactors and to
test a variety of waste materials. A strategy to improve the feasibility and sustainability of waste utiliza-
tion is via technological advancement and the minimization of environmental effects and process eco-
nomics. This paper sheds light on diverse areas of waste utilization via thermal plasma as a potentially
sustainable and environmentally friendly technology.
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Contents

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .................................................... 2
2. Thermal plasma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .................................................... 4
2.1. Generation of thermal plasma vis-à-vis treatment of waste . .................................................... 5
2.1.1. Arc plasma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .................................................... 5
2.1.2. Radio frequency induced (RF) plasma . . . . . . . . . . . . .................................................... 6
2.1.3. DC-RF combinations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .................................................... 6
2.1.4. Microwave (MW) plasma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .................................................... 7
2.2. Characteristics of thermal plasma. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .................................................... 7
2.2.1. Plasma composition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .................................................... 7
2.2.2. Thermodynamic characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .................................................... 7
2.2.3. Transport characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .................................................... 7
3. Different types of wastes vis-à-vis thermal plasma treatment and issues related with them . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

∗
Corresponding author at: Institute of Plasma Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, v. v. i., Za Slovankou 1782/3, 182 00 Prague 8, Czech Republic.
E-mail address: [email protected] (V.S. Sikarwar).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pecs.2020.100873
0360-1285/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
2 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873

3.1. Types of wastes vis-à-vis plasma treatment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

3.2. Issues related with some kinds of wastes and their treatment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4. Advanced thermal plasma technologies for waste treatment with energy and material recovery. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.1. Gasification/pyrolysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.1.1. Different designs of plasma reactors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.1.2. Different plasma working gases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.2. Compaction and vitrification. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.3. Recovery of metals. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.3.1. Metals from electronic waste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.3.2. Iron from red mud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.3.3. Metals from electroplating sludge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.3.4. Metals from metallurgical waste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.3.5. Metals from slag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.3.6. Metals from dust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4.3.7. Metals from other materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4.4. Carbon nanospheres (formation and) recovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
5. Mathematical modeling investigations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
6. Deployment of thermal plasma waste treatment worldwide and at industrial level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
6.1. Thermal plasma assisted waste conversion at industrial scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
6.2. Current scenario of thermal plasma assisted waste conversion around the globe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
7. Impact on environment and economics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
7.1. Effect on environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
7.2. Economics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
8. Conclusions and perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Declaration of Competing Interest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

1. Introduction ing most of the global wastes. On the other hand, the Middle East
and North Africa are generating the least (~ 6%) (Fig. 1). As per
The 21st century has been marked by an exemplary progress the World Bank projections, by 2050, the fastest growing regions
in the fields of information, technology, research and development in waste production would be Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and
(R&D) coupled with a remarkable increase in the standards of liv- the Middle East and North Africa, where the total waste generation
ing. However, the flip side is the rising population and growing is predicted to rise by more than three times, two times, and two
energy demand. As the world hurtles toward its urban future, the times, respectively [5]. The grave side is that more than half of the
amount of wastes, one of the most important by-products of an wastes is currently openly dumped in these regions, consequently,
urban lifestyle, is rising even faster than the rate of urbanization. the rising curves of wastes would have adverse implications for the
It pressurizes the waste managers who are charged with a huge environment and health, thus calling for urgent action.
task: get the waste out from underfoot and do so in the most Thermal waste processing pathways such as pyrolysis, gasifica-
economically, socially, and environmentally optimal manner pos- tion and incineration hold promises for more efficient treatment
sible. Waste management, especially solid waste management, is and energy recovery from the wastes [6,7]. In recent years, inter-
almost always the responsibility of local governments and is often est in the application of advanced thermal plasma technology for
their single largest budget item, particularly in developing coun- wastes treatment has increased enormously, primarily because of
tries. Additionally, solid waste is one of the most malicious local its ability to supply elevated temperatures with high energy den-
pollutants - uncollected and improperly treated solid waste is usu- sities, independence from the type of waste, potential to gener-
ally the leading contributor to local flooding and pollution at all ate saleable co-products coupled with a high destruction efficiency,
three levels, namely, air, water, and soil; and poses many potential control of the processing environment, environmental compatibil-
kinds of risks which have a significant impact on society and the ity and energy recovery [8-10]. By thermochemically treating the
environment at large. combustible parts (either in the absence of O2 , H2 O or CO2 in py-
In 2016, the European Union (EU) generated around 272 mil- rolysis, or in the presence of O2 in sub-stoichiometric amount or
lion tons [1] whereas the US generated around 262 million tons in the presence of H2 O or CO2 in gasification) into H2 or syn-
[2] of municipal solid waste (MSW). The rapid growth in popula- gas for heat and power generation, and vitrifying the noncom-
tion with growing standard of living coupled with the rising in- bustible parts simultaneously into dense, inert, leach-resistant vit-
dustrialization has enhanced the production of wastes in several rified slags, pollutants emission can be reduced to almost zero and
streams, which is assumed to enhance further, in the near future. valorization of all the components of the wastes can be achieved.
The thought provoking side of this story is the adverse influence The history of the application of plasma processes goes back
which current routes deployed for waste management have. Land- to nineteenth century when the metal working industries devel-
fill forms the leading route for waste disposal with its inherent but oped and employed plasma to supply elevated temperatures in fur-
grave effects [3,4]. This pathway causes pollution and greenhouse naces [11-17]. In early twentieth century, chemical industries used
gas (GHG) emissions that contribute to climate change, as well as plasma to generate acetylene employing natural gas as the feed-
significant losses of materials - a particular problem for the EU stock. Plasma deployment for MSW processing has started since
which is highly dependent on imported raw materials. early 1980s and its successful applications in processing difficult
It is worth noting that the world produces around 2.1 billion wastes (hazardous wastes and others) clearly reflects the maturity
tons of MSW per year and is anticipated to rise to 3.40 billion tons of this technology [18-23]. As far as specialized plasma reactors
by 2050 [5]. At about 23%, the East Asia and Pacific are produc- are concerned, Goldberger et al. [24] have reported plasma spout
 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873 3

Fig. 1. Waste generation (current & projected) by region [5].

and spout fluid bed in 1963 for the purpose of quenching plasma The particle is also heated by the radiation coming from plasma
reaction species in fluidized bed. In another case, investigators denotes as qr A, where qr is radiative power from the plasma to
[25] have used graphite particles fluidized bed and achieved maxi- unit surface area of the particle [29]. The heat transfer equation is
mum conversion to acetylene as 50% employing pure CH4 in 1968. given as Eq. (1).
They placed a RF plasma generator below the fluidization distribu-
tor of a fluidized bed composed of sand, zirconia and graphite. In Q = hA(Tp − Ts ) + Aqr − σ ǫ ATs4 (1)
early 1970s, Bal and co-authors [26] employed spout bed to carry
Where h is heat transfer coefficient (heat transferred per unit
out coal pyrolysis in DC Ar-H2 plasma. Albeit fundamental devel-
area per Kelvin), A is the surface area of the particle, Tp is the
opments of waste treatment using plasma started taking place in
plasma temperature, Ts is the surface temperature of the particle,
1980s and 90s, actual enactment and operation at commercial level
qr is the radiation heat flux (heat transferred per unit area per unit
initiated around two decades ago [9].
time) from plasma to unit surface area of particle, σ is the Stefan-
Plasma is usually considered as the fourth state of matter and
Boltzmann constant and ǫ is the particle emissivity (ratio of the
is composed of electrons, ions, neutrals in the ground state, excited
energy radiated from the particle’s surface to that radiated from
species and photons. It is worth noting that overall the plasma is
a black body). In simple terms, Eq. (1) depicts the heat transfer
electrically neutral. It is interesting to know that more than 99% of
mechanisms taking place in early stages as the surface of the par-
the known universe is in the plasma state, e.g. in the sun [27,28].
ticle vaporizes after absorbing the heat and form gaseous products
Plasma is the state of matter with the highest energy per particle.
leading to heat transfer and as a result the mechanisms change.
The high energy content of the plasma makes it very useful for a
Investigators have used the thermal plasma pathway to treat a
wide variety of applications. When the heavy particle temperature
variety of wastes and produce fuel gas which in turn was employed
approaches the electron temperature, local thermodynamic equi-
for diverse applications. Interestingly, the inert glassy slag which is
librium is obtained and such plasmas are known as thermal plas-
obtained as a by-product in the plasma assisted waste treatment
mas [27]. Types of plasmas and types of thermal plasma generators
can be upgraded to value added products such as glass ceram-
are depicted in Fig. 2.
ics, road filler material, building construction material, etc. [19,30].
Fundamentally, the heat transfer which occurs between the
On the other hand, some researchers have employed plasma tech-
plasma and a particle when the latter is in contact with the for-
nology to synthesize carbon nano-spheres (CNs) from methane
mer is depicted in Fig. 3. The heat transfer in thermal plasma pro-
[31,32], acetylene [33], propane [34], polymers [35-37], waste tires
cess is similar to that of conventional thermal proces. As thermal
[38] and waste rubber [15] along with the generation of gaseous
plasma is in local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE), it may be de-
products. Furthermore, plasma technology is also applied for the
scribed as a fluid with specific thermodynamic and transport prop-
treatment of metal containing wastes for metal recovery and refin-
erties. Therefore, heat transfer in ThP can be described in terms of
ing. Valuable metals such as Ag, Au, Cu, Al, Fe, Zn, etc. can be re-
heat convection, conduction and radiation. Comparing to other flu-
claimed for a wide variety of wastes such as waste circuit boards,
ids, thermal plasma is characterized by very high enthalpy, ther-
red mud, galvanic sludge, etc. [39-44].
mal conductivity and radiation intensity, and thus, heat transfer
The aim of this article is to evaluate different thermal plasma
in thermal plasma is extremely high. The net energy required for
based waste treatment pathways as depicted in the cartoon
the heating and subsequent melting of the particle is denoted by
(Fig. 4). In the next section, we explain thermal plasma generation
Q and it is the difference between the conductive and convective
technologies along with their properties. In Section 3, we discuss
heat transferred from the plasma to the particle and the radiative
various types of waste and issues related to some special kinds.
energy loss from the surface of the particle to the environment.
Section 4 explains diverse thermal plasma assisted routes to pro-
4 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873

Fig. 2. Classification of different types of plasmas and plasma generators.

ence of LTE in a plasma does not mean that plasma is in com-

plete thermodynamic equilibrium [27]. One of the cardinal rea-
sons for the deviation from complete thermodynamic equilibrium
is the lack of excitation equilibrium. However, this deviation does
not have any impact on a large number of engineering applications
[28].
The ratio of electric field to pressure (E/p) plays a key role in
reflecting the kinetic equilibrium in a plasma. The heavy particles’
temperature approaches the electron temperature for small values
of E/p (either small E or greater p or both). This is considered to be
the fundamental requirement for LTE in a plasma. Other require-
ments are excitation and chemical equilibrium along with some
limitations on the gradients in the plasma [45-47]. In general, pres-
Fig. 3. Basic heat transfer mechanisms for plasma assisted heating and melting of sures in LTE plasmas are higher than 10 kPa as pressures below 10
a particle [29]. kPa cause the electron temperature to surpass the heavy particles’
temperature. In Eq. (2), Ohm’s law establishes the relation between
current density and electric field.
cess waste with energy and material recovery to characterize the
current state of the art and classify inspiring novel technologies. j = σe E (2)
This paper also sheds light on the various mathematical modelling
Where j is current density and σ e is electrical conductivity.
studies and their associated limitations. It is followed, in Section 6,
In general, particle number density is employed rather than
by a discussion of plasma assisted waste treatment at industrial
pressure as depicted in Eq. (3) [27].
scale and its current scenario worldwide. The environmental im- 
pact and economics of thermal plasma (hereafter called ThP) based p= nr kTr (3)
processing plants are also discussed in the Section 7. Conclusions r
are drawn and perspectives for future applications are given in Where subscript r represents neutral particles, electrons and ions, T
Section 8. In spite of the large volume of R&D conducted in the represents absolute temperature and k is the Boltzmann constant.
aforementioned areas, there is no all-inclusive review on ThP based Eq. (2) can be reduced to Eq. (4) provided the degree of ionization
waste utilization with an emphasis on related areas. This article is very small.
will assist R&D efforts into the scale-up of ThP based waste treat-
ment plants. p = nkT (4)
where n represents the number density of neutral particles.
2. Thermal plasma Waste treatment along with energy and material recovery em-
ploying ThP necessitates the controlled generation of ThP with the
Plasma which is close to local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE) desired properties to achieve the anticipated output. The genera-
is called as thermal plasma. It is interesting to know that the pres- tion of ThP via different means, suitable for waste treatment and
 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873 5

Fig. 4. Cartoon depicting various waste processing pathways employing thermal plasma with energy and material recovery.

Table 1
A comparative evaluation of diverse plasma systems vis-à-vis waste processing [27,48-51].

Parameter DC arc system Thermal RF plasma Reduced pressure MW plasma

RF plasma

Temperature 5000–20000 K 3000–8000 K 1200–1700 K 1200–2000 K

Electrode erosion Yes (1000–3000 h life in inert gas; No No No
200–500 h life in oxidative gas)
Cooling of plasma system Required Required Not required Not required
Plasma ignition Easy Difficult Easy Difficult
Plasma volume Small Medium Large Large
Plasma velocity High High Low Low
Efficiency of power 60–90% 40–70% 40–70% 40–70%
supplying equipment

its major characteristics such as plasma composition, thermody- is a function of 4 factors – (1) arc power, (2) plasma gas, (3) loca-
namic properties and transport properties are illustrated in the fol- tion in the arc and (4) cooling of the arc [9]. One of the attractive
lowing sections. features of transferred arc configuration is the requirement of min-
imum plasma gas flow rates. The reactors employing transferred
arc are available for a broad range of power from few hundred
2.1. Generation of thermal plasma vis-à-vis treatment of waste
watts to tens of megawatts. Another unique feature of this config-
uration is the ability to have multiple rod electrodes (MRC). MRC
Basically, plasmas are generated by passing an electric current
enables the arcing between two rod electrodes which in turn aid
through a gas. In general, gases are insulators at ordinary room
in indirect heating of the material. Moreover, it permits the cre-
temperatures and therefore, in order to make it an electrical con-
ation of multiple series arcs between the waste and the electrode.
ductor, ample amount of charge carriers need to be generated.
In addition, it allows the operation in AC or three-phase mode.
Plasmas are generated via many routes such as by high intensity
In the non-transferred arc configuration, the plasma jet leaving
arcs, by microwaves, by shock waves, by a radio frequency induc-
the torch (which holds the arc), is employed to treat the wastes.
tion (RF) and by laser or high energy particle beams. In addition,
The temperature of the plasma jet leaving the water-cooled plasma
plasmas can be generated by heating gases in an elevated temper-
torch is from 10 0 0 0 to 20 0 0 0 K and is dependent upon the plasma
ature furnace. However, this pathway is only employed with metal
gas and, power level and design of the torch [52]. In real scenarios,
vapors with low ionization potentials on account of inherent tem-
the plasma starts to decay after exiting the torch and therefore, the
perature limitations [27,28].
waste is not usually exposed to these elevated temperatures.
For waste treatment, most ThPs are produced either by an elec-
Transferred arc configurations are more desirable as far as
tric arc or by RF. Some plasmas are also produced by microwave or
waste treatment is concerned. It is on account of the availability of
DC-RF combination. However, arc plasmas are leading and widely
high heat fluxes and high total heat flows as major fraction of the
employed on account of their insensitivity to the alterations in pro-
heat flux is linked with the current flow. Eq. (5) depicts the heat
cess conditions. Table 1 represents different plasma systems with
flux (qA ) given to the anode where the first two terms constitute
respect to the waste treatment.
around 50% of the total heat transfer [53,54].
 
2.1.1. Arc plasma k ∅ dTa dTe
qA = je ∅w + 2 + je Te − Ka − Ke + ji (xi − ∅w ) + Qrad
Electric arc generated plasma is classified in two categories e σ dz dz
namely, transferred arc and non-transferred arc. In transferred arc
(5)
configuration, the waste material (to be treated) is made as one of
the electrodes and is directly exposed to the arc plasma. The tem- where je is the current density, w is the work function of the an-
perature of the arc is normally in the range of 120 0 0–20 0 0 0 K and ode material,  is the thermo-diffusion coefficient, σ is the elec-
6 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873

trical conductivity, k is Boltzmann’s constant, e is the electronic in oxygen atmosphere. In some cases, nitrogen and carbon diox-
charge, Te and Ta are the electron and heavy particle temperatures, ide are also employed as the elevated arc voltages enhance the jet
respectively, Ke and Ka are the electron and heavy particle ther- power. It is worth noting that a similar or higher impact can be ob-
mal conductivities, respectively, xi is the ionization energy of the tained by steam plasmas, although at a cost of enhanced electrode
plasma gas and Qrad is the radiation transfer. The principal limita- erosion due to the mixture of H2 , O2 and OH radicals. The Insti-
tion of transferred arc systems follows from the fact that treated tute of Plasma Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the
waste must be electrically conducting material. Tokyo Institute of Technology employ plasma torches with steam
For non-transferred arc configuration, convective heat transfer for waste treatment [59,60]. Argon is also used as a plasma gas
relation is employed as mentioned in Eq. (6). with an advantage of enhanced electrode life. The flip side of ar-
gon is its low specific heat which culminates in low torch power
qP = hT (TO − TS ) + Qrad (6)
levels and enthalpy fluxes of the gases exiting the torch, along with
where hT is the heat transfer coefficient. It is a function of plasma low energy transfer rates.
thermal conductivity, Reynolds number and Prandtl number and,
therefore, it is dependent upon fluid dynamic situation [55,56]. 2.1.2. Radio frequency induced (RF) plasma
T0 is the plasma temperature and TS is the waste temperature. It RF plasma is generated by high frequency current usually in the
should be noted that the characteristics of the gas change sharply range of 2 to 27 MHz flowing in a coil surrounding the plasma
in the thermal boundary layer, the use of properties at an av- chamber [47]. The electric field is induced inside the chamber
erage film temperature between the free stream and the surface and initiates a current along a ring shaped route inside the re-
temperatures may direct to flawed outcomes and consequently, actor producing the plasma. In the absence of electrodes, neither
an average over an integral quantity should be taken to account plasma is contaminated by metallic vapors nor electrode erosion
for plasma reactions increasing the heat transfer. For instance, takes place. However, immense care is required in optimization of
Eq. (7) reflects the same principle for thermal conductivity (K). the injection location of the waste into the torch and of the gas
∫TTOS K (T )dT flow rates. Moreover, RF torches lack flexibility as far as plasma
K= (7) gas flow rates and torch power are concerned [9]. Furthermore, the
TO − TS heating efficiencies of the torches are generally lower. Typically, RF
Plasma torches employing AC or 3-phase have been commonly plasma torches are employed for hazardous waste destruction. A
used since about 40 years before especially for transferred arc RF plasma torch is shown in Fig. 6.
reactors. One of the many 3-phase designs worth mentioning is
given by Rutberg which is a three- electrodes non-transferred 2.1.3. DC-RF combinations
configuration [50,57]. The electrodes contain water-cooled copper Hybrid plasma systems are developed to compensate the lim-
tubes. The erosion of the electrodes was minimized by the move- itations of individual systems, for instance, RF plasma has many
ment of the arc attachment employing the self-magnetic field of attractive features such as high purity, large plasma volume and
the current in the electrodes. However, DC is the first choice in low gas velocity. The flipside of RF system is difficult ignition and
the majority of the newer installations. It is on account of reasons an easy extinction under some operating conditions. On the other
such as improved control over the arc position, lower noise level, hand, easy ignition and stable operation are cardinal advantages
more stable operation, lower electrode consumption, comparatively of DC plasma system. Consequently, DC-RF combination was de-
lower refractory wear and lower power consumption [20,58]. A veloped to overcome the limitations of RF system. Kawajiri et al.
simple comparative schematic of DC non-transferred plasma torch [61] designed and developed a DC-RF system, where RF-ICP (where
and DC transferred plasma torch is depicted in Fig. 5. ICP is Inductively coupled Plasma) flow (6 kW) was employed as
As far as plasma gas is concerned, the most commonly em- the main plasma and DC plasma jet (1 kW) was used as the auxil-
ployed gas is air on account of two reasons - (1) to supply oxygen iary. DC plasma jet was mounted on the RF-ICP torch and was used
to carbonaceous waste for reactions and (2) to reduce the process
cost. Oxygen is also used as a plasma gas. It decreases the total gas
flow in the plasma reactor and also reduces the nitrogen content of
the produced gas, which is desirable in some applications. Usage of
oxygen as plasma gas is limited by higher electrodes erosion rate

Fig. 5. (a) DC non-transferred plasma torch, (b) DC transferred plasma torch [20,51]. Fig. 6. RF plasma torch [20,51].
 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873 7

ions and neutrals. Qi and Q are the partition functions of the ions
and neutrals respectively, h is the Planck’s constant and Ei reflects
the ionization energy.
p = (ne + ni + n ) kT (10)

ne = ni (11)
The partition functions are shown in Eq. (12) and (13) [27,63].

Qi = gi,s exp −Ei,s /kT (12)
s

Q= gs exp −Es /kT (13)
s

Fig. 7. MW plasma torch [20,51]. Where gi,s and gs are the statistical weights of the energy levels of
the ions and neutrals, respectively, whereas Ei,s and Es shows the
corresponding energy levels of their excited states. Eqs. (11) and
to ignite RF-ICP flow and stabilize it during the course of operation. (12) emphatically reflect that the species in excited states follow
Ar was the working gas whereas alumina micro-particles were em- a Boltzmann distribution. It is worth noting that the Eggert-Saha
ployed as the tracers to examine the in-flight particle properties. equation is treated as a ‘mass action law’ for the ionization process
They reported strong interaction between DC flow and RF-ICP flow as it can be derived from the principles of thermodynamics.
which culminated in complex flow structure for the hybrid system.
This, in turn, has also resulted in instability and finally, the hybrid 2.2.2. Thermodynamic characteristics
flow was extinguished. It highlights the need of further studies re- The thermodynamic characteristics of plasma consist of many
lated to interactions between the different flows and also about properties such as the mass density, the internal energy, the en-
the characteristics of hybrid flow. thalpy, the specific heat and the entropy. Moreover, free energy
(Helmholtz function) and free enthalpy (Gibbs function) are de-
2.1.4. Microwave (MW) plasma rived thermodynamic properties. The mass density (as mentioned
MW plasma is generated by electromagnetic radiations in the in Eq. (14)) can easily be derived from the plasma composition
frequency range from 300 MHz to 10 GHz. In general, MW plasmas where ni is the number density of the different species and mi re-
(usually 2.45 GHz) are denser as compared to RF plasmas (13.56 flects the analogous mass [27,28].
MHz) [28,62]. In addition, MW plasma zone is larger, too. MW in- 
duced plasma can further be sub-classified into several categories ρ= ni mi (14)
such as surface wave discharges, cavity induced plasma, electron i

cyclotron resonators, free expanding atmospheric plasma, etc. All The other thermodynamic properties such as the internal en-
these MW induced plasmas work under a wide range of operating ergy, the enthalpy, the specific heat, the entropy, the free energy
conditions where power ranges from few W to several hundred kW and the free enthalpy are derived from the partition functions and
and pressure ranges from around 0.1 Pa to over hundred kPa, ap- play a vital role in the assessment of the thermodynamic functions.
plied for both noble and molecular gases [62]. A MW plasma torch
is shown in Fig. 7. 2.2.3. Transport characteristics
In real world scenarios, ThPs are not uniform in nature. They
2.2. Characteristics of thermal plasma exhibit gradients in characteristics such as particle number den-
sities (n), velocity components (vx ), temperatures (T) and electric
The key characteristics of ThP are determined by its compo- field intensity (E). Fluxes are generated by these gradients and
sition followed by the thermodynamic properties and transport have linear relationships with these gradients provided the latter
properties. The latter two are functions of the former. The database is within certain limits. These linear relationships may be deduced
of these properties plays a vital role in the modeling of ThP pro- from Fick’s law, Ohm’s law and Fourier’s law [27,63].
cessing and plasma reactors. Energy and momentum are transferred among particles by col-
lisions and consequently, ample details about the collision interac-
2.2.1. Plasma composition tions are required to calculate the transport coefficients as these
If a thermal plasma is produced from a monoatomic gas such coefficients are a function of collision cross sections among par-
as argon (Ar) as shown in Eq. (8), then the following three species ticles [28]. Theoretical calculation of collision processes is a chal-
compose the plasma, namely electrons, neutral Ar atoms with lenging task on account of complex structures of molecules and
some in excited state and positive Ar ions with some in excited atoms. Highly simplified models for defining collision cross sec-
state. tions were generated in some cases but experimental data are very
limited [27]. Therefore, for intricate mixtures, the transport coeffi-
Ar ↔ Ar + + e (8)
cients are usually unknown or uncertain. This problem has further
The Eggert-Saha equation, Dalton’s law and the condition for grown in ThPs in real scenarios, as they deviate from LTE.
quasi-neutrality of the plasma determine the plasma composition
for the aforementioned case, as depicted in Eqs. (9)–(11) [27,28]. 3. Different types of wastes vis-à-vis thermal plasma treatment
2
  and issues related with them
ne ni 2Qi 3
2π me kT
 E 
i
= exp − (9) Thermal plasmas are employed to treat a wide spectrum of
n Q h2 kT
wastes for example, hazardous waste (HW), municipal solid waste
Where ne is the electron number density, ni is ion number den- (MSW), medical waste (MW), etc., as it delivers high heat fluxes
sity and n is neutral number density irrespective of the state of the at elevated temperatures and high fluxes of reactive species, which
8 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873

• Wastes with large fraction of halogens: These types of

wastes also include a wide spectrum of plastic materi-
als which necessitates elevated temperature treatment and
quenching. It is often difficult to get a saleable co-product.
• Inorganic solid materials: They are commonly treated for the
recovery of valuable components. The volume reduction for
these kind of wastes is achieved via melting. They can also
be oxidized and restrained in the form of a non-leaching
slag.

In general, wastes are also categorized based on their form of

appearance and on the fraction of hazardous material in them. A
commonly employed list of various waste materials is:

(1) Municipal solid waste or MSW is the major waste stream

in any country with typically a low level of contaminants.
MSW is more commonly known as trash or garbage and
consists of everyday items that are used and then discarded,
such as product packaging, grass clippings, furniture, cloth-
ing, bottles, food scraps, newspapers, appliances, paint, etc.
The most common pathway for its treatment is landfill-
Fig. 8. Different types of wastes which are usually treated by thermal plasma
ing. Increasing pressure on landfill sites has imposed the
(MSW = municipal solid waste, LRW = low level radioactive waste).
use of other volume reduction methods such as incinera-
tion which is commonly employed to extract the heat from
the waste. Thermal plasma technology is widely employed
enable the destruction of any kind of waste. In addition, the heat
to treat MSW around the globe. Detailed discussions can be
source is directional in nature with sharp interfaces which can be
found in Section 4.
controlled independently of the chemistry. ThP can produce a tem-
(2) Medical solid waste (MW) contains a wide spectrum of con-
perature of up to around 20 0 0 0 K which is almost ten times more
taminated material. However, the high heat content is fa-
than what is generated via fossil fuel combustion [20]. Both the
vorable for incineration. But as compared to incineration,
commonly employed classifications of various types of wastes are
plasma assisted treatment decreases the exhaust gases to
shown in Fig. 8.
as low as 10%. The plasma treatment plants not only of-
High throughput coupled with compact reactor geometry, very
fer the possibility of small local treatment plants but also
high quench rates in the order of greater than 106 K/s which en-
a volume reduction of the wastes by 90% vis-à-vis inciner-
able the formation of specific gas and solid material and, low gas
ation plants [75]. The thermal plasma based process offers
flow rates as compared to fossil fuel combustion, form the other
many attractive features including the generation of syngas
attractive features of waste treatment by ThP [20,64]. On the other
for electricity production. Any treatment of MW should be
hand, the flipside of this kind of waste treatment is the employ-
cost-effective and should also be supported by the regula-
ment of the most useful and expensive form of energy – electricity
tions. However, a hybrid process which includes plasma pro-
[65]. However, a complete comparative cost evaluation frequently
cess coupled with incineration or any other thermal pro-
exhibits the economic viability of ThP assisted waste treatment.
cess offers better utilization of the calorific content of the
Table 2 reflects diverse types of waste treated via different plasma
wastes.
systems.
(3) Hazardous liquids and gases including commonly employed
solvents, PCB containing oils and CFCs. Most of these fluids
3.1. Types of wastes vis-à-vis plasma treatment have high calorific content except CFC, still they cannot be
treated via incineration on account of halogen content which
Heberlein and Murphy [9] have given the classification of may lead to other toxic formations during incineration.
wastes on the basis of composition as mentioned below with an (4) Residues from incinerators which usually consists of bottom
objective to choose an optimal treatment pathway: ash and fly ash and contain large chunks of heavy metals.
Incineration of wastes such as MSW is widely adopted in
• Wastes with high organic material content: These kind of many nations, especially in those where landfilling is strictly
wastes have high calorific content. The retrieval of this heat regulated such as Japan. About 70% of total MSW gener-
via syngas employing a ThP process is a lucrative option. ated in Japan is incinerated with a total production of about

Table 2
Processing of various wastes by thermal plasma.

Waste Source of the waste Plasma system Reference

Bottom ash Municipal incinerator DC transferred arc [66]

Fly ash and sludge Waste water treatment plant DC non-transferred arc [67]
Fly ash, asbestos Sanitation center DC non-transferred arc [68]
Bottom ash and fly ash Hospital incinerator, power plant DC transferred arc [69]
Fiber reinforced polymer composites (FRPC), gill net, waste glass - DC non-transferred arc [70]
Dried sludge, converter flue dust Hot galvanizing process, steel making RF plasma reactor [71]
Zinc oxide Electric arc furnace AC plasma arc furnace [72]
Electroplating sludge - DC transferred and non-transferred arc [73]
Charcoal with NaCl - DC plasma + RF plasma [49]
Chlorine containing waste - DC plasma with nebulization system [74]
 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873 9

Table 3
Chemical composition of MSW incinerated ashes [9,20,67,68].

Elements Incinerated ash (Source: Bottom ash (Source: Taiwan Fly ash (Source: Budapest Incinerator bottom ash (IBA) and fly ash
Taipei incinerator plant) incinerator plant) (wt %) incinerator plant) (wt %) mixture (Source: Japanese incinerator
(wt %) plant) (wt %)

CaO 32.96 17.83 15.30 14.40

SiO2 12.41 22.90 56.70 53.70
Al2 O3 8.06 0.19 7.50 21.60
TiO2 2.18 - 0.80 -
Fe2 O3 2.35 11.40 1.60 3.10
MgO 2.23 1.05 1.50 1.90
Na2 O 5.15 3.96 1.50 8.20
K2 O 1.92 - 1.80 2.10
ZnO - - 0.30 -
Cl− - - - 0.43
S - - - 0.08

15–30% as fly ash or bottom ash [9,48]. Where fly ash is chromium, etc.). The quantities of theses metals are often
collected in the filters, bottom ash is collected below the very motivating for their extraction and recycling. Leacha-
grate. The major fraction of toxic materials such as heavy bility of harmful fractions from these wastes make them
metals is found in fly ash as they easily evaporate during hazardous. Basic oxygen furnaces, blast furnaces and elec-
the processing of the wastes [76]. Many nations including tric arc furnaces used in manufacturing sectors produce
Europe have stringent fly ash treatment regulations. Ther- huge amount of dust and slag which need to be treated
mal plasma treatment of these incinerator residues is widely [81]. These wastes can be transformed to glassy slag cou-
adopted on account of several advantages such as volume pled with the recovery of metals by oxide reduction. Ther-
reduction by 50% and conversion of toxic heavy metals to mal plasma technology offers all these features. Reducing
a non-leaching slag. When high temperature fluxing agents plasma gas or reducing additive such as carbon may be em-
are mixed with these toxic materials at around 1800 to 20 0 0 ployed for reduction of metal oxides. On the other hand,
K, they generate a glassy slag which is non-leaching in na- zinc and lead can be condensed from the vapor phase or
ture and fulfills the leaching norms for the slag [9,77]. A can be collected as a melt [77]. Post recycling, vitrification
considerable amount of work was carried out to demon- is also carried out as enabled by elevated plasma temper-
strate the stability of such slags along with the leaching atures. Electroplating industries also produces waste water
rates of heavy metals from such slags. Typical composition containing nickel chromium and zinc. They can be treated
of MSW incinerated ashes is shown in Table 3. by DC non-transferred arc at reduced pressures employing
(5) Sewage sludge and other sludge with high organic and mois- various plasma gas environments [73,82]. Furthermore, ThP
ture content, and contaminated soil with harmful organic pathways (plasma arc technology) are employed to dissolve
materials. The contaminants and moisture are removed from and recover the aluminum dross produced as a by-product
these kind of wastes by treating them at comparatively in aluminum smelting processes. It should be noted that the
lower temperatures. A volume reduction by a factor of 20 plasma treatment is especially useful in the case of auto-
is usually achieved [9]. Other considerations are similar to mobile shredder waste as the high amount of metal content
those applied in incinerator residue wastes. present in the waste can easily be separated from other ma-
(6) Low level radioactive waste (LRW) and, military waste and terials and recovered [83,84].
other wastes which may range from nerve gas ordinance to
asbestos materials. All these wastes have high negative val- 3.2. Issues related with some kinds of wastes and their treatment
ues. In majority of cases, commonly employed waste treat-
ment techniques (incineration and landfilling) are not feasi- Some of the wastes mentioned in Section 3.1 are associated
ble. In general, the ThP pathway can be used for all these with specific issues and consequently, should be dealt with great
wastes and offers a volume reduction by a factor of 3. In care. For example, ThP pyrolysis with non-transferred plasma
addition, it also enables the separation of radioactive ma- torches (as high heat fluxes are not required) can easily treat haz-
terial from the non-hazardous portion with the encapsula- ardous liquids and gases but their exhaust contains gases which
tion of the hazardous part in a glassy non-leaching slag. It could contribute to global warming and ozone destruction and that
is worth noting that the low boiling point radioactive ma- need to be treated appropriately [9,48,64].
terial should be captured from the exhaust gases in a filter In general, decontamination is desired (often required) for all
and reprocessed. contaminated solid wastes coupled with volume reduction and en-
(7) Asbestos containing waste is hazardous in nature and can capsulation of inorganics. Most solid waste treatment facilities em-
cause fatal pulmonary diseases even with traces of it in ploy transferred arc technology on account of the requirement for
the lungs [78]. Conventional methods include its solidifica- high heat fluxes. The exception to this approach is provided by Eu-
tion using cement or polymeric resins [79,80]. However, ThP roplasma and by Westinghouse [85]. They employ non-transferred
treatment provides complete destruction. A commercial fa- plasma torch which provide a part of the process heat for fur-
cility named INERTAM treats asbestos wastes and converts naces while rest of the heat is either provided by the partial com-
them into a non-leachable product, with an elevated tem- bustion of coke or of the calorific content of the wastes. Another
perature plasma vitrification route employing air as plasma exceptional approach is pursued by Pyrogenesis for the treatment
gas [78]. of shipboard waste where plasma is employed to provide reaction
(8) Manufacturing waste such as electric arc furnace dusts, alu- heat in a minimal space [86,87].
minum dross, etc. For example, steel making industries pro- Two considerable limitations of transferred arc technology are
duce large amounts of dust and sludge which contains the very high concentration of heat flux over a small area, and the
metals (for example, iron, zinc, lead, molybdenum, nickel, requirement of electrically conducting waste. RETECH eliminated
10 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873

the former limitation by stirring the waste in a rotating reactor Due to the high temperature and high energy density gener-
[9,88]. Tetronics mitigated this limitation by moving the plasma ated by thermal plasma, a large throughput can be accommodated
torch whereas other companies installed multiple arcs in series with a small scale reactor. The high flux densities generated by
[9,48]. The second limitation can be overcome by employing either the plasma at the reactor boundaries lead to a rapid attainment of
of the three pathways: (1) by initially operating the torch in non- steady state conditions, effectively reducing the start-up and shut-
transferred mode until the waste material has ample conductivity, down times [90]. Hybrid torches such as the one employed at In-
(2) by inserting a metal strip in the waste which may serve as an- stitute of Plasma Physics have numerous advantages vis-à-vis other
ode until the waste become conducting or (3) by using multiple torches (Fig. 16). Due to the principle of arc stabilization by a wa-
arcs where an initial arc can be generated between the two elec- ter vortex, the flow rate of plasma gas (typically 0.3 g/s H2 O + 0.2
trodes heating the waste indirectly until it can conduct the current g/s Ar) is very low, but the plasma enthalpy is higher than 200
[85]. MJ/kg, and the mean plasma temperature is higher than 150 0 0 K
[48]. By changing the argon flow rate, the hybrid torch provides
the possibility of controlling the parameters of the plasma jet and
4. Advanced thermal plasma technologies for waste treatment the plasma composition (O–H–Ar) in a wide range from high en-
with energy and material recovery thalpy, low density plasmas typical for water stabilized torches to
lower enthalpy, higher density plasmas generated in gas stabilized
Thermal plasma assisted waste treatment has emerged as one torches. An important characteristic feature of this hybrid torch is
of the waste treatment technologies in current era on account of the very low mass flow rate of plasma. As low amount of plasma
several inherent characteristics. They can be employed to treat a carries high energy, the power needed for heating of plasma to
very wide spectrum of waste because of their high heat fluxes at reaction temperature is very low, and the efficiency of utilizing
elevated temperatures coupled with high fluxes of reactive species. plasma power for waste valorization is extremely high.
In addition, fast reaction times provide large throughput even with Commonly, air and nitrogen are employed as plasma gases. The
a small scale reactor. Furthermore, the reforming of toxic com- advantage of these gases is the low cost and in case of nitrogen, an
pounds from the species exiting the reactor is lowered consider- additional advantage of low erosion rate of torch electrodes. These
ably due to steep thermal gradients which permit fast quench- gases are used especially in systems with high power torches. The
ing rates. Plasma gasification and pyrolysis are widely employed to main problem is a dilution of produced syngas by nitrogen and
treat a variety of waste with or without energy and material recov- consequently, low calorific content of syngas [48]. Steam or CO2
ery. ThPs are also used for compaction and vitrification. Moreover, are used when better quality of syngas (basically mixture of H2
they are employed to recover metals and other material, as well as and CO) is needed. The presence of oxygen in plasma gas leads to
energy from waste streams. In some cases, plasma heating is also higher erosion rate of electrodes which results in lower life time of
coupled with some other thermal technology such as incineration the torch. Other gases such as methane or other hydrocarbons are
or resistive heating to enhance process efficiency and an interest- also sometimes employed.
ing account of this coupling can be found elsewhere [89]. It is worth noting that the flow rate of plasma gas in plasma
It should be noted that a plasma torches operate simultane- torch is mainly determined by the necessity to reduce plasma tem-
ously both as plasma-chemical and as a thermal apparatus. Mainly, perature and consequently, to reduce the overheating of torch elec-
three types of reactions take place during the gasification pro- trodes and nozzles [48,91,92]. This determines minimum flow rate
cess, namely, thermal cracking, partial oxidation and reforming re- for a given arc power. However, higher reaction rates and higher
actions. The first reaction is thermal cracking where the complex energy efficiency is achieved in plasma reactor with high plasma
molecules are dissociated into lighter molecules, forming hydrocar- temperatures and enthalpies, which are achieved for low plasma
bon gases and hydrogen. These reactions are endothermic. gas flow rates. An optimum plasma gas composition and flow rate
The second type of reactions generate combustible gases by must be found for specific torch and reactor conditions and treated
partial oxidation. These partial oxidation reactions essentially form material.
carbon monoxide, and limit the formation of carbon dioxide and In general, a thermal plasma assisted solid waste disposal sys-
water. Carbon dioxide and water are complete oxidation products, tem consists of the following subsystems:
and therefore, have a negative influence on the calorific value of
synthesis gas. Furthermore, the metals contained as the inorganic (a) Thermal plasma reactor: A vessel with the supply of ther-
fraction of the waste also undergo partial oxidation. It is worth mal plasma coupled with power supply, cooling water sup-
mentioning that it is essential to control the amount of oxygen en- ply and gas supplies. It also has control and data acquisi-
tering the reactor to fix all the carbon molecules and optimize the tion equipment. Moreover, it has continuous collection of
CO/CO2 ratio. All of these partial oxidation reactions are exother- slag and metal at the bottom.
mic in nature. (b) Auxiliary combustion chamber: It assists in complete gasi-
The third type of reactions are reforming reactions which are fication of soot due to ample residence time at high tem-
endothermic. The reactions between the products resulting from peratures. Thermal energy is either supplied by a low-power
different reactions, group the components into new sets. For in- non-transferred plasma or by a burner.
stance, the reaction between carbon and water to form carbon (c) Quenching chamber: It offers quenching of the exiting gases
monoxide and hydrogen, or the carbon can react with carbon diox- by some liquid (usually water) to prevent the generation of
ide to form carbon monoxide. These reactions contribute both to furans and dioxins.
the formation of a combustible gas, and to the consumption of ox- (d) Cyclone: It is employed to remove the particulates.
idized material which would otherwise decrease the calorific value (e) Filters: They are used to eliminate small particulates.
of the synthesis gas. (f) Scrubber: It is used to remove acidic gases.
In addition to the energy consumption by different types of re- (g) Activated carbon filter: It is employed to remove heavy met-
actions, the factors such as ‘speed of reactions’ (kinetics) and ‘de- als.
gree of completion of reactions’ (thermodynamics) must be taken (h) Fan: It is used to produce sub-atmospheric pressures in the
into account. Taken together, these three factors indicate that the entire system.
formation of carbon monoxide and hydrogen increases as the reac- (i) Hydrogen sulfide absorber (depending upon the waste).
tor temperature rises. (j) Waste preparation system (depending upon the waste).
 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873 11

(k) Waste feeding system (depending upon the waste). Hrcak and co-authors [112] and, Yoon and co-authors [111] em-
ployed microwave plasma whereas Tu and co-authors [105] used
4.1. Gasification/pyrolysis RF plasma and demonstrated that the conversion ratio of waste
material to syngas is directly dependent upon the power consump-
Pyrolysis and gasification are two cardinal routes to treat waste tion of the plasma system and can reach up to 99% provided the
material efficiently and in eco-friendly manner employing ThP. Py- power level is high. Huang and co-writers [38] used capacitive cou-
rolysis is defined as the breaking of chemical components with the pled RF plasma to treat tire wastes. They reported an indirect de-
application of thermal energy provided by the ThP, without oxida- pendence of gasification performance and conversion efficiency on
tion. On the other hand, plasma gasification is the production of the particle size; i.e., increasing the particle size decreased both
fuel gas (CO + H2 + CO2 + CH4 + other gases in minor amounts) the parameters. The conversion of waste was found to be between
by the incomplete oxidation of the material. The fuel gas has mul- 40 and 78% for particle sizes ranging from 200 μm to 600 μm. Uhm
tiple uses including the production of H2 , production of chemicals and co-workers [113] and, Shin and co-workers [114] employed
and fuels (e.g. Fisher Tropsch fuels, Dimethyl Ether, Synthetic Nat- MW plasma for coal gasification. The former reported a cold gas
ural Gas, etc.) generation of electricity via gas engines, combustion efficiency of 84% at 1640 °C reactor temperature whereas the lat-
in sterling engine, generation of steam to run a steam turbine, etc. ter demonstrated an increase in generated syngas for the increased
The cardinal objective of gasification is to generate fuel gas ratio of the rates of steam flow to coal flow. In the Czech Academy
(product gas). It should be noted that all the carbon and hydro- of Sciences, Hlina and co-authors [115] employed 110 kW Ar-H2 O
gen atoms from the organics present in the waste can be used for plasma system to evaluate the waste (woody biomass, oils, plas-
fuel gas generation provided the waste and the produced gases are tics) treatment. They demonstrated that the best performance is
heated to an amply high temperature. Maximum conversion effi- given by wood followed by plastics and oils. A parametric study
ciency (waste to fuel gas) is obtained when all carbon is trans- was conducted by Yoon et al. [111], taking glycerol as the feedstock
formed to CO. An oxidizing agent (O2 , air, steam, CO2 ) is added and employing MW plasma system. They reported the highest cold
when the carbon molar fraction is higher than the oxygen mo- gas efficiency at a zero O2 /fuel ratio condition, but at the cost of
lar fraction to avoid the generation of solid carbon and guaran- lowest carbon conversion (~80%). With a rise in O2 /fuel ratio a de-
tee complete carbon gasification. Eqs. (15)–(17) represent common cline in the cold gas efficiency was observed with an increase in
gasification pathways [48]: carbon conversion. The authors suggested to keep the O2 /fuel ra-
( nc − nO ) tio between 0 and 0.4 in order to obtain optimum values for car-
M+ O2 = nc CO + nH2 H2 (15) bon conversion and cold gas efficiency. In addition, it was demon-
2
strated that when glycerol was fed to the reactor using a gas-liquid
M + (nc − nO )H2 O = nc CO + (nH2 + nC − nO )H2 (16) nozzle, the H2 and CO fractions were enhanced whereas the CO2
content declined with an improvement in carbon conversion and
cold gas efficiency by 4.5% and 7%, respectively. In addition, the
M + (nc − nO )CO2 = (2nc − nO )CO + nH2 H2 (17) fuel droplet size, the mixing effect and the retention time inside
Where nc = c/Mc , nH2 = h/2MH and nO = o/MO are the molar con- the plasma flames were reported as the critical factors that have
centrations of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen in the processed waste a profound impact on the product gas yield and the gasification
material M with mass fractions of C, H2 and O2 equal to c, h and efficiency.
o respectively. The resultant composition of reaction products is a In a novel investigation, Wang and co-authors [116] investigated
function of many variables such as composition of waste, plasma, ThP assisted treatment of textile dyeing sludge (a hazardous waste
added gases, temperature etc. The elevated plasma temperatures with complex constituents) using a rotating DC arc plasma system
and high enthalpies aid in establishing thermodynamic equilibrium with a rated power of 50 kW with CO2 and Ar as flow gases. A uni-
inside the plasma reactor. Consequently, the final composition of form and stable jet at around 30 0 0 K coupled with proper mixing
generated gases can be obtained via thermodynamic computations. of waste and working gas, are major two advantages of employing
Fig. 9(a) and (b) gives a simplified picture of plasma assisted py- rotating arc. They reported carbon conversion efficiency as 99.9%,
rolysis and gasification simplistically, respectively. energy conversion efficiency as 71.8% and lower heating value of
Detailed investigation of a wide variety of waste and other ma- syngas as 8.91 MJ/Nm3 for a feed rate of 36 g/min and a CO2 flow
terials was conducted at the Institute of Plasma Physics of the rate of 14.08 g/min. They also demonstrated a volume reduction
Czech Academy of Sciences by Hrabovsky et al. [93] employing ratio of the sludge as 41.19%. The fixing efficiency of the heavy met-
steam plasma. Materials tested were fir sawdust, wooden pellets, als in the solids were reported to be more than 99% with the con-
sunflower seeds skins, lignite powder, polyethylene pellets, shred- firmation from leaching tests that the solid products were harm-
ded waste plastics from bottles, RDF and low temperature pyrolysis less in a wide environmental pH range. It is worth noting that this
oils from used tires. All materials were processed under the same new pathway to treat textile dyeing sludge has eliminated all the
conditions in a reactor with a volume of 0.2 m3 . The power of the flipsides of conventional treatment technologies such as inefficient
plasma torch was between 110 and 140 kW with an efficiency of degradation of harmful organics, incomplete fixation of heavy met-
65%, therefore, plasma enthalpy flow was between 72 and 91 kW. als and water/soil contamination.
The temperature of the reactor walls was in the range of 1100– Jamroz and co-workers [117] used a 1.8 kW MW plasma reac-
1400 °C with 18 g/m as the mass flow of steam. They reported tor for the disposal and steam reforming of tar compounds. They
maximum H2 generation as 61% for coal and maximum LHV of the performed the experiments in a N2 stream on tar surrogates such
produced gas as 11.3 MJ/m3 for RDF. as benzene, toluene and 1-methylnapthalene. They examined the
Some key pyrolysis and gasification investigations for plasma impact of tar conversion, gas flow rate and steam addition on con-
waste treatment are depicted in Table 4. version efficiency. With the initial tar amounts of 10 g/Nm3 , N2
Thermal plasma assisted waste treatment is dependent upon flow at 30 L/min and steam-to-carbon ratio as 3, the process ef-
numerous factors such as plasma power, reactor temperature, type ficiency was reported to be around 98%. The conversion efficiency
of plasma gas, flow rate of plasma gas, residence time of waste was found to be inversely proportional to the tar amounts and gas
inside the reactor, physical and chemical properties of the waste, flow rate. The conversion rate was enhanced with an increase in
etc. The impact of all these factors was investigated by many re- steam addition. Acetylene, soot, benzene derivatives and cyanides
searchers around the globe. Some examples are given below. were found to be the main products of plasma assisted tar con-
12 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873

Fig. 9. (a) Thermal plasma pyrolysis, (b) Thermal plasma gasification.

version. The steam addition enhanced H2 , CO and CO2 by reducing nated with radioactive substances are treated with selective fluori-
the amounts of aforementioned main products. nation and chlorination, for instance, uranium contaminated struc-
Thermal plasma assisted thermochemical treatment is espe- tural components undergo fluorination and gasification, or cobalt
cially useful for radioactive wastes on account of the availabil- undergoes fluorination followed by the removal of fluoride with
ity of high fluxes of reactants from a plasma to drive the de- water [60,118,119]. Furthermore, radioactive Nb can be isolated
sired thermochemical reactions. Based on this principle, many pro- from Nb–Zr alloy by plasma fluorination of Zr at around 3500–
cesses are in their infancy stage. They are based on selective oxi- 4500 K [118]. These and alike processes employ plasmas gener-
dation, fluorination, chlorination or evaporation to isolate radioac- ated by means such as microwaves, dielectric barrier discharge,
tive fractions from the waste. In the water cleaning systems of nu- DC plasma torch, containing high concentrations of Cl and F
clear plants, the ion exchange resins are treated where gasification reactants.
of carbon-rich material and oxidation of radioactive material (Co
and Cs) employing an O2 plasma take place. In this process, not
4.1.1. Different designs of plasma reactors
only hazardous fractions are trapped but also a weight reduction
Thermal plasma assisted pyrolysis and gasification are usually
of about 95% is achieved [60]. In addition, metal alloys contami-
carried out in a fixed or moving bed and consequently, a vast num-
 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873 13

Table 4
Some significant plasma assisted pyrolysis and gasification investigations of waste.

Waste Plasma source Reactor Reference

Medical waste DC Plasma Fluidized bed reactor [23]

Wood DC Plasma - [94]
MSW DC Plasma Plasma spouted bed reactor [95]
Carpet waste DC Plasma - [96]
MSW DC Plasma Moving bed reactor [95]
Solid waste DC Plasma Fixed bed reactor [96]
Used old tires DC Plasma Entrained flow bed [11]
Polypropylene (PP) DC Plasma Entrained flow bed [97]
Used old tires DC Plasma Entrained flow bed [15]
Agricultural residue DC Plasma Entrained flow bed [98]
Granulated metal powder DC Plasma Spout bed [99]
C coating from CH4 DC Plasma Spout bed [100]
Vanadium ore DC Plasma Spout fluid bed [101]
Charcoal deformed after treatment DC-RF hybrid Fixed bed reactor [49]
MSW with raw wood RF - [102]
Tire powder RF - [38]
Rice straw RF - [103]
Polyethylene RF - [104]
Rice straw RF Entrained flow bed [105,106]
Polypropylene RF Entrained flow bed [107,108]
Heavy oils RF Fluid bed [109]
Spirulina algae MW - [110]
Polyethylene MW - [62]
Glycerol MW - [111]

Fig. 11. Plasma moving bed reactor (continuous mode) [51,95].

temperature flows from the torch to the waste inside the reactor
and gasifies it. In the latter strategy, plasma torch (either trans-
Fig. 10. Plasma fixed bed reactor (batch mode) [51,95].
ferred or non-transferred) is placed inside the reactor. The power
source in either case is DC. Both the approaches were applied to
treat MSW and medical wastes at small scale [95,96]. Thermal
ber of studies especially demonstration projects employed fixed plasma waste processing unit was developed at Utashinai, Japan
bed reactors. Entrained flow reactors were the second choice of the in 2002 to process MSW and automobile shredder residue with
researchers whereas few investigations were also done using spout a capacity of 170 tons/d, which has now grown to 300 tons/d. It
/ spout-fluid reactors. generates 7.9 MWh electricity selling 4.3 MWh back to grid. An-
(a) Fixed/moving bed other such plant with Westinghouse design is currently operating
Fixed or moving bed reactors have the simplest design with a in Rome, Italy with a capacity of 336 tons/d. Fixed bed reactors
bed of solid waste in particles form, a solid waste feeding unit, ash were also employed in such investigations which required longer
removal unit and gas exit system [95]. The waste is kept in the contact between plasma jet and waste [49].
center of the fixed bed reactor while waste enters from the top The foremost advantages of this kind of reactor design are sim-
(or side) of the reactor in case of moving bed, considering batch ple construction, efficient heat transfer to the waste and continu-
mode for the former and continuous feed mode for the latter. The ous contact with the plasma resulting in the ability to treat almost
organic fraction is transformed to fuel gas and exit at the top of any kind of waste. On the other hand, the continuous contact be-
the reactor whereas the ash and the metals form the slag at the tween plasma jet and the waste limits further improvement in ar-
bottom of the reactor, after they come in contact with the ionized eas where selectivity of the intermediate products is desired.
gas. Fixed bed is depicted in Fig. 10 whereas moving bed is shown (b) Entrained flow bed
in Fig. 11. The commonly employed design in major studies was entrained
Typically, two different approaches are linked with fixed bed flow bed reactor where waste in the pulverized form was fed into
/ moving bed design, namely, location of plasma outside the bed the tail flame of plasma jet [11,15,38,51,97,98,105,106,108,120-124].
and immersion of plasma inside the bed. Westinghouse and Hi- This design is considered as a unique multiphase flow reactor de-
tachi employed the former strategy where a water-cooled non- sign with a high potential especially for processes where elevated
transferred torch is placed outside the reactor. The gas at elevated temperature, ultra-short contact time reactions where specific in-
14 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873

Fig. 12. Plasma entrained flow bed reactor [51,95].

termediate products are required. It is usually employed for coal

pyrolysis in hydrogen plasma to generate acetylene. It is also used
for cracking polymer such as polypropylene to monomer. In cur-
rent years, some investigations are also done on waste process-
ing employing entrained flow reactor [11,15,97,105,106]. A sim-
ple schematic showing entrained flow bed reactor is reflected in
Fig. 12.
Zhao and co-authors [98] used an arc entrained flow reactor to Fig. 13. Plasma spout bed reactor [51,95].

evaluate the degree of pyrolysis at different times and to exam-

ine the generation of different products at different stages of py-
located outside the bed whereas Fig. 14(b) shows the same reactor
rolysis. The plasma generator was placed at the upper portion of
with plasma jet immersed inside the bed.
the reactor apparatus whereas waste material injector was placed
The major advantages of plasma spout bed are higher rate of
below the plasma generator. Pulverized waste was injected into
mixing, better solid-fluid contact, improved heat and mass transfer
the plasma jet using Ar. The reacting biomass feed and plasma
with high conversion efficiencies with short residence times. The
jet then entered an extended reaction zone. Four sampling areas
cardinal limitation is lack of bed stability.
were made at different locations in the reaction cavity vis-à-vis
core temperatures and residence times, with a 200 mm spacing
between any two sampling points. H2 , CO, C2 H2 and CH4 were re- 4.1.2. Different plasma working gases
ported to be the main gases. They achieved a carbon conversion Gases are used in many plasma generating systems. These gases
efficiency of 79% and oxygen conversion of about 72% with specific (air, Ar, He, H2 , N2 , steam, etc.) are called as plasma working gases.
power consumption under optimal conditions as 3.7 kWh/Nm3 . Heat and momentum transfer of the plasma are functions of the
The key advantages of entrained flow design are the short res- type and characteristics of the plasma gas. It can be an inert gas or
idence time of solids in the plasma resulting in rapid heating and it may take part in the reaction. One should look for the heating
quenching rate are achieved. The other unique features are plug value and cost effectiveness while selecting a plasma gas for a par-
flow reactor performance and comparatively uniform flow struc- ticular system. Usually, plasma gasification of wastes with signifi-
ture. The limitation is low energy efficiency on account of conduc- cant carbon content is carried out in the presence of steam to ob-
tive, convective and radiative losses. In addition, electrode pollu- tain H2 rich high quality product gas. Researchers have employed
tion of DC plasma reduces the product purity and also limits the steam reforming to accomplish this objective [49,125]. In addition,
generation of desired intermediate products [51,108]. ThP pyrolysis of waste polymer can generate good quality syngas
(c) Spout/spout-fluid bed by the addition of water steam in the reaction system. It was found
Basically, the underlying principle of a plasma spout bed is to produce large amounts of CO as compared to N2 or Ar plasma
same as of a standard spout bed. The major difference is that in pyrolysis with a considerable increase in H2 fraction and total gas
a plasma spout bed, the heat for the process is given by a DC yield.
plasma jet which forms the spout as shown in Fig. 13 [26,99,100]. (a) Mixed gas-water steam
On the other hand, a plasma spout-fluid bed reactor is a hybrid In industrial applications, the major consideration for any
reactor with the characteristics of fluidized bed and plasma spout plasma generator system is to avoid electrodes damage by plasma
bed. It combines the plasma flow of a single central opening as gas and consequently, enhance the life of the electrodes. In DC/AC
in a spout bed with the supplementary fluid flow through the plasma systems, it is difficult as well as unsuitable to employ pure
distributor plate as in a fluidized bed [101,109]. They are mainly water steam as plasma gas. Therefore, Ar and N2 are commonly
employed for combustion and gasification processes, for instance, used gases to enhance the stability. The flipside is that the product
for hydrocarbon pyrolysis, for minerals processing and for materi- gas contains large amounts of N2 or Ar which significantly reduces
als processing. As far as plasma generators are concerned vis-à-vis the calorific value of the fuel gas. On the other hand, if pure O2 or
spout and spout-fluid bed, DC arc torch, MW system and induc- water steam is employed, the calorific content of the product gas
tive plasma torch are employed. In general, DC arc torches are used increases.
for hydrocarbon pyrolysis or minerals processing whereas RF sys- Many studies have employed a combination of water steam or
tems are employed for gas and materials synthesis [26,99-101,109]. N2 and Ar as the DC/AC plasma working gas [104,126,127]. The In-
Fig. 14(a) shows a plasma spout fluid bed reactor with plasma jet stitute of Plasma Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences devel-
 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873 15

Fig. 14. Plasma spout fluid bed reactor with (a) plasma jet located outside the bed (b) plasma jet located inside the bed [51,95].

oped a unique DC plasma torch where the electric arc is stabilized 4.2. Compaction and vitrification
by a water vortex in combination with gas flow [127]. The plasma
gas consists of steam with a small amount of Ar. The flow rate of Plasma compaction and vitrification of solid wastes can be de-
plasma gas is very low with mean plasma temperature of more fined as the melting of inorganics (and gasification of organics)
than 150 0 0 K and plasma enthalpy as high as 20 0 MJ/kg. The ma- present in the waste to remove voids and bind toxic material in
jor advantage of hybrid gas-water stabilization is the flexibility in a ceramic matrix by the addition of suitable fluxes. A block di-
controlling the parameters of the plasma jet and the plasma com- agram representing the plasma vitrification process is shown in
position in a very wide range from high enthalpy low density plas- Fig. 15. Vitrified ceramics with low leaching rates are produced
mas to low enthalpy high density plasmas. The high temperature with the aid of elevated plasma temperatures which enable melt-
and plasma composition in such system are very favorable for the ing by high heat fluxes. Some important studies related to plasma
waste treatment processes. Furthermore, this hybrid torch has a assisted waste vitrification are listed in Table 5.
low mass flow rate of plasma, which in turn reduces the power Thermal plasmas are employed worldwide to treat, recycle and
needed to heat the plasma to reaction temperature which finally utilize incineration residues, i.e. fly ash and bottom ash. As major
enhances the efficiency of plasma utilization for waste processing. hazardous substances are contained in fly ash, its efficient treat-
(b) Water steam ment is required and the standards are regulated by governmen-
Microwave or radio frequency plasma systems without the tal norms. At a temperature range at the bottom of the reactor of
problem of electrode corrosion employ oxidizing plasma gases around 1650–1800 K, inhomogeneous bottom ash can be converted
such as O2 or water steam [38,128]. Sekiguchi et al. [128] inves- into homogeneous glassy slag. Post vitrification, the average com-
tigated plastic treatment in a MW system employing steam as position of the product comprises of 12.2% Al2 O3 , 52.1% SiO2 , 2.3%
plasma gas along with Ar. The reactor operated at 2.45 GHz and MgO, 4.2% Na2 O, 16.2% CaO and 7.7% Fe2 O3 and on an average, 82%
600 W. Polyethylene was treated in batch operation. When steam Fe, 12% Cu and small fractions of P, S and C are recovered [141-
addition took place, the color of plasma was changed from bluish- 144]. Numerous investigations vis-à-vis mobility and volatilization
white to reddish. Emission spectra revealed several high peaks in of toxic compounds, potential to reuse and removal of hazardous
Ar plasma between 700 and 850 nm generated from Ar excitations. elements have been carried out. In a latest study by Sobiecka and
When steam was added, the intensities of these spectra were re- co-authors [145], hospital incineration fly ash, which is considered
duced and spectra derived from H2 O dissociation were reflected a hazardous waste, was transformed with the aid of ThP to a glassy
at 300, 650 and 780 nm corresponding to OH, H and O with OH product, which can be landfilled without any adverse effect on
exhibiting the strongest peak. The major products generated were the environment, or can also be turned to colored tiles with the
CO and H2 . While treating PVC by using steam plasma, Cl was cap- addition of some additives. The objectives of the study were to
tured by H and transformed into HCl which can easily be removed optimize temperature and energy to enhance process economics
by scrubber. Therefore, this process can be adopted for any kind of and to stabilize the produced vitrificates (colored and non-colored
waste including those containing halogens with simultaneous gen- tiles) by differing the composition of waste mixtures. A 20 kW arc
eration of fuel gas. plasma was employed using Ar as the purge gas. The leaching tests
(c) Methane proved the immobility of toxic materials in both kind of tiles. In
For special purposes, apart from other gases, methane can also addition, compression strength of the tiles without the addition of
be used as a plasma gas. Microwave plasma system was employed commercial pigments in the raw material was found to be higher
to transform brown coal to important fuels and fuel gas (C2 H2 , H2 , than the ones where the pigments were added. They also reported
CO) in a single step using methane plasma gas [129]. It upgraded that the physical and chemical properties along with the internal
the carbon content of the residue without the application of high structures of the vitrificates are a function of the composition of
pressure H2 . the wastes.
16 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873

Fig. 15. A block diagram showing plasma assisted vitrification process.

Table 5
Major plasma assisted compaction and vitrification investigations.

Waste Objective(s) of the investigation Conclusion(s) Reference

Fly ash (1) To assess slag reuse potential Heavy metals were immobilized [130]
(2) To evaluate immobilization of with the destruction of dioxins and
heavy metals furans. Slag was found to be
(3) To evaluate destruction of reusable.
dioxins and furans
Fly ash (1) To assess the volatilization and Trace elements were immobilized [131]
mobility of trace elements and were reusable.
(2) To evaluate the reuse potential
of trace elements
Fly ash (1) To assess slag reuse potential Slag was found to be reusable for [132]
different applications.
Fly ash (1) To assess slag reuse potential Slag was reported to be reusable. [133]
Fly ash (1) To evaluate the production of Good quality glass ceramics were [134]
glass ceramics produced.
Fly ash (1) To examine the elimination of Hazardous nature of the waste was [12]
hazardous properties reduced below the permissible
limits.
Fly ash (1) To assess slag reuse potential Slag was found to be reusable for [135]
different applications.
Fly ash (1) To evaluate volatilization of trace The vaporization of trace elements [136]
elements were within the regulatory limits.
Fly ash (1) To examine the volatilization Trace elements were immobilized. [137]
and mobility of trace elements The vaporization of trace elements
were within the regulatory limits.
Fly ash and asbestos (1) To examine the removal of Hazardous properties of the waste [68]
hazardous characteristics were reduced below the regulatory
limits.
Fly ash and sludge (1) To evaluate slag reuse potential Slag was found to be reusable for [67]
from waste water different applications.
treatment
Fly ash and bottom ash (1) To assess the removal of Slag was found to be reusable for [138]
hazardous properties different applications. Hazardous
(2) To assess slag reuse potential properties of the waste were
reduced below the permissible
limits.
Fly ash from a power (1) To assess slag reuse potential Slag was found to be reusable for [69]
plant and bottom ash (2) To examine the volatilization different applications. Trace
from hospital and mobility of trace elements elements were immobilized.
incinerator
Bottom ash (1) To assess slag reuse potential Slag was found to be reusable for [66]
(2) To examine process feasibility different applications and process
was reported to be viable.
Bottom ash (1) To assess mobility of trace Trace elements were immobilized. [139]
elements
APC residue (1) To examine the production of Geo-polymer glass was well formed. [140]
geo-polymer-glass
 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873 17

Table 6
Characteristics of glass ceramics produced from the thermal treatment of plasma vitrified product [12,20,70,134,149].

Characteristics Vitrified fly ash (heat Vitrified incinerator ash (heat FRPC, gill net, glass
treated at 1323 K) treated at 1123 K) (4/1/1)+13.2 wt% [Ca(OH)2 ]

Major crystalline Wollastonite anorthite Albita, anorthite, wollastonite Gehlenite akermanite

phases crystobalite
Density (g/cc) - 2.99 2.60
Thermal expansion - 9.85 -
coefficient
(x106 /°C)
Four-point bending - - 82.00
strength (MPa)
Compressive - - 297.00
strength (MPa)
Water adsorption - 0.28 0.00
(%)
Knoop hardness - 4.84 -
(GPa)
Mohr’s hardness 7.00 7.00 -

Post vitrification, the cardinal crystalline phase of the slag is addition of additives. They reported that the leachability tests are
found to be Ca2 SiO4 with a mass ratio of CaO/SiO2 nearly 1 well below the specified limits.
[146,147]. Ioanna et al. [140] investigated the formation of geo- In Cenon, France, the compaction of incinerator residue is car-
polymer glass composites of considerable strength from air pol- ried out by Europlasma employing a non-transferred arc system
lution control (APC) residues by employing DC plasma treatment. with 500 kW torch capacity with air as the plasma gas [9]. The in-
The compressive strength was reported to be around 130 MPa with cinerator treats around 120 0 0 0 tons/y of MSW whereas the plasma
a high density of 2070 kg/m3 and low porosity. Kuo et al. [131] ex- reactor processes around 3650 tons/y of the fly ash generated from
amined the properties (crystalline characteristics and mass distri- the incineration plant. The energy consumed is around 1300 kWh/t
bution of metals) of the generated slag after plasma vitrification of of fly ash. Many large-scale installations are based in Japan, for
MSW incinerator fly ash located in Southern Taiwan. They demon- instance, a plasma plant at Shimonoseki which treats around 42
strated that the low boiling point metals such as Cd, Zn, Pb va- tons/d of fly ash and bottom ash employing a reactor with two
porized in flue gas as particulate phase whereas metals with high torches, each rated at 1.3 MW. The energy required is about 800
boiling points remained in the slag. High concentrations of Zn (226 kWh/t. All these reactors are functioning for many years with a
g/kg) and Pb (315 g/kg) made it attractive to reclaim the partic- nominal maintenance requirement of 1 h for every 300 h of oper-
ulate phase. The Institute of Nuclear Energy Research in Taiwan ation.
used a 100 kW non-transferred arc plasma to treat MSW incin- The Inertam plant at St. Denis, France was designed by Euro-
erator ash where Ar was employed for ignition while N2 was used plasma to process asbestos containing waste using three plasma
as a carrier gas [12,19]. The vitrified slag captured all the heavy torches placed at different locations with 500 kW as the capacity
metals originally present in the feedstock and it had very low of one torch while other two are rated at 2 MW each [150]. The
leachability. energy consumption is 1300 kWh/t. The vitrified product is utilized
In an interesting investigation, Sobiecka et al. [148] used a ThP as road construction material. It is worth noting that Europlasma
arc system to treat a mixture (in varying fractions) of two haz- employs a post combustion chamber in many of their designs to
ardous wastes, namely MSW incinerator fly ash and Cr rich sewage meet the incinerator regulations by ensuring complete combustion
sludge to generate less toxic inert glassy products. The leaching of carbon containing gases.
tests results were within the limits set by European agencies. Silica, With the tightening regulations to prevent ocean pollution, the
Ca and Al formed around 72% of the fly ash composition whereas compaction of shipboard waste has become a grave issue. The ad-
about 95% on the inorganics in the sludge contained Zn, Cr and vantage with the plasma system is the requirement of minimal vol-
Cu. It was demonstrated that the energy required and the melting ume and small footprints. In this context, Pyrogenesis Corp., Mon-
temperature are inversely proportional to the amount of sludge in treal, Canada developed a plasma system (non-transferred plasma
the feedstock mixture. Moreover, hardness tests reflected that the torch) for the volume reduction of shipboard waste with a process-
hardness is directly dependent upon the amount of fly ash in the ing capacity of 200 kg/h [151-153]. The waste undergoes pretreat-
mixture whereas the sludge fraction reduces the hardness. ment in which the metallic fraction is separated from the com-
Fibre reinforced polymer matrix composites (FRPMC) are ther- bustible content, followed by the shredding and milling of the lat-
mosetting or aramid polymers, therefore, they are non-combustible ter. The torch operates at 109 kW and supplies around 15% of the
in nature. They are usually employed in maritime applications, energy whereas the remaining 85% comes from the calorific con-
for e.g., in boat hulls, superstructures, chemical tanks, aircrafts, tent of the waste [153]. The energy requirement is around 665
etc. Due to their unique chemical composition, conventional waste kWh/t excluding the energy required for waste preparation. Rapid
treatment pathways are not feasible to dispose them. Thermal start-up time, rapid shut-down time, small reactor size, low gas
plasma vitrification not only disposes them but also produces glass flow rate, no requirement of fuel gas, etc. are some of the attrac-
ceramics which can be utilized as construction materials. Typical tive features of this system.
composition of glass ceramics is provided in Table 6. Chu et al. Tetronics, Faringdon, UK, developed a twin torch reactor design
[70] evaluated the feasibility of plasma treatment on a mixture of where one of the torches acts an anode while other serves as cath-
FRPMC, gill net and waste glass using DC non-transferred arc sys- ode [9]. The electrodes can be water cooled metal or graphite. The
tem with Ar to generate the plasma followed by air as the main waste material is injected into the plasma between the two elec-
ambient gas. Different ratios of the wastes were examined for 1 h trodes. The twin arc arrangement can be operated either in non-
at 1523 K and all the slags produced were amorphous. Glass ce- transferred mode or in transferred mode, depending upon the con-
ramics were generated by heat treating the vitrified slag with the ditions and the requirements. A twin torch reactor is employed
18 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873

with a rated power of 250 kW to process bottom ash at a rate wastes on account of inherent advantages such as very high tem-
of 50 kg/h [88]. The specific energy consumption is around 50 0 0 peratures which enable the separation of the slag metal, and the
kWh/t. Comprehensive leaching tests have proved that the leaching presence of reactive species to increase the reaction kinetics and
rates of heavy metals are far below the permissible limits [86,88]. reduce the reaction time. Rath and co-workers [40] employed a DC
A large scale installation with 2800 kW capacity treats 3300 kg/h extended arc plasma torch system with a rated capacity of 35 kW
of ash. Although ash processing is the major application of this to treat the e-waste (crushed form) via pyrolysis. The reactor was
kind of torches, they are also employed to process sewage sludge, operated between 1675 and 1875 K using Ar. During the treatment,
solid hospital waste, low level radioactive waste, incinerator ashes, the e-waste was melted and the metals (Cu, Al and Fe) present in
etc. in an installation with rated capacity of 480 kW at the rate of the form of mixture were then leached with the aid of HCl in the
70 kg/h [9]. Tetronics has also addressed the issue of energy re- presence of H2 O2 as depolarizer.
covery from large waste streams. The Gasplasma process which is Few researchers [173,174] also performed e-waste treatment in-
a hybrid of fluidized bed gasification coupled with syngas cleaning vestigations without any pretreatment. A sample weighing 17.4 kg
by plasma, recovers more than half of the heat in the form of syn- was reduced by 71% where 10.6 kg solid products were remaining
gas [9,86]. Additionally, around 60% of the produced power can be in which 7.1 kg was slag whereas 3.5 kg were recovered metals. It
exported. emphatically demonstrated the effectiveness of plasma application
Vitrification of hazardous and non-hazardous wastes via ThP to e-waste for metals reclamation. They also reported the gener-
treatment result into an inert product which meets the safety cri- ation of huge quantities of CO which may be employed as energy
teria set by European Union and consequently, it can be utilized gas. This method was found to have high economic value with con-
as construction material or can be landfilled. The generated gran- siderable energy efficiency [165].
ulated slag is usually employed to produce decorative permeable
brick, pavement brick, and concrete aggregates whereas cast slag is 4.3.2. Iron from red mud
used for interlocking blocks, tiles and bricks [66,154]. The products Investigators [41] have employed DC extended arc plasma sys-
meet the performance criteria on account of their ample strength. tem to recover Fe from red mud by reducing the dried red mud
The slag from a commercial plasma plant based in Japan is used to powder. Lime was employed as the flux agent whereas low ash
make water permeable blocks and pavement bricks as they satisfy metallurgical coke was used as a reducing agent. The plasma re-
the product standards and leaching norms [66,155]. Moreover, the actor temperature was between 1675 and 1875 K. They reported
plasma treatment of incinerator wastes results in a slag which can the presence of metallic iron in the metal phase and C, Si, O
be transformed to value added product such as glass ceramics post and P as the impurities in X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. Car-
heat treatment [88,156]. bon came from incomplete reaction of the reducing agent, i.e. coke.
It should be noted that the ThP technology should not only The metal recovery rate was a function of reducing agent, alkalin-
be weighed in terms of technical performance but should also be ity and reaction time.
evaluated vis-à-vis process economics. In this perspective, ThP vit- Rath et al. [39] used a plasma arc furnace and employed
rification suffers from a major drawback of employing the most us- graphite (with fixed C as 99%) as the reducing agent. Limestone,
able form of energy, namely, electricity. However, this limitation is dolomite, fluorite and pure calcium carbonate were used as flux-
countered by the fact that plasma treatment aids in saving landfill ing agents in the study whereas Ar was the working gas. The ma-
tax and simultaneously produces value added reusable by-products jor composition of red mud was Fe, Al, Si, Na and TiO2 with traces
and end products, within the regulatory framework. Therefore, it of S and P. The heat treatment was applied for 5–18 min. The re-
should be seen as a recovery route rather than a disposal pathway sults demonstrated that the metal recovery rate enhanced till the
for waste treatment. treatment time was 15 min and then gradually started decreas-
ing. The concentration of the reducing agent was varied from 9
4.3. Recovery of metals to 14%. It was reported that a concentration above 11% has nega-
tive impact on the recovery rate. In addition, the energy consump-
Wastes containing metals such as e-waste, aluminum dross, zir- tion was found to have an inverse relationship with metal recovery
con, red mud, galvanic sludge, incinerated ash, etc. are quite dif- rate.
ficult to deal with, however, they have immense potential for re-
cycling. Worldwide researches are going on to develop metal re- 4.3.3. Metals from electroplating sludge
covery processes to enhance the economics of the primary pro- Electroplating industries generate large amounts of electroplat-
cess from which metal containing wastes are generated and to pre- ing sludge. It has a complex composition which includes Cr, Fe,
vent environmental pollution. Conventional methods namely, py- Ni, Cu, Zn along with heavy metal compounds and soluble salts
rometallurgical (such as incineration, pyrolysis, melting, etc.) and [157]. The research work demonstrated that the plasma assisted
hydrometallurgical have significant limitations [157,158]. The for- treatment recovers heavy metals as well as transforms the ex-
mer technologies generate toxic gases along with dioxins and fu- cess sludge into an inert slag. Ramachandran et al. [73] employed
rans whereas the latter generate a huge amount of acidic waste DC non-transferred arc plasma (7–16 kW) under reduced pres-
liquid [159]. Thermal plasma assisted processes employing DC sure conditions with three different working gases, namely, Ar-
extended transferred arc plasma reactor, DC non-transferred arc H2 , H2 and N2 to process electroplating sludge with recovery of
plasma torch, RF thermal plasma reactor, etc. are considered eco- metals. The powder was collected from the top, bottom and walls
friendly and efficient pathways for metal recovery from wastes. of the reactor post treatment and was treated to recover Zn, Cr
Table 7 reflects some major investigations vis-à-vis metal reclama- and Ni.
tion and purification. Leal and co-workers [169] in their study employing DC ThP ex-
posed the electroplating sludge (water content ~ 64%) to elevated
4.3.1. Metals from electronic waste temperatures which vitrified the sludge and deactivated the met-
E-waste or electronic waste is derived from a diverse circuit als such as Fe, Zn and Cr. They used both transferred and non-
board waste where engineering plastics are the main component transferred arc plasmas in two different sets of experiments with
containing huge fractions of heavy metals, namely, Cd, Cr, Hg, Pb, Ar as the working gas. The ThP pyrolysis was followed by leach-
Cu and flame retardants. Nowadays, the deployment of ThP in ing tests to evaluate the quality of the vitrified slag. Fe, Zn, Al
a wide variety of studies has grown to recover the metals from and Cr were reclaimed in significant quantities. The investigations
 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873 19

Table 7
Plasma waste treatment for metal recovery and purification.

Waste Objective(s)/process Plasma system Reference

Red mud Recovery of Fe Plasma arc furnace [39]

Red mud Recovery of Fe 35 kW DC extended transferred [41]
arc plasma
Direct reduction iron Recovery of Fe Pilot scale DC plasma arc furnace [160]
Aluminum dross Recovery of Al 300 kW plasma [9]
Aluminum dross Recovery of Al 600 kW rotary arc furnace [161]
Zircon Recovery of Zr Low powered transferred arc [42]
plasma
Zircon Recovery of Zr DC plasma [162]
Copper clad laminate Plasma pyrolysis of electronic 30 kW DC plasma [163]
waste; recovery of Cu
e-waste Plasma pyrolysis of electronic 35 kW DC extended transferred [40]
waste; recovery of Cu arc plasma
A dust separated from the flue Recovery of Zn RF thermal plasma reactor [164]
gas of a Siemens-Martin
furnace (SMD) and the sludge
from the hot galvanizing of
steel products
Waste circuit boards Plasma pyrolysis of electronic DC non-transferred arc plasma [165]
waste; recovery of Ag, Au, Cu, Pt
Fe, Cr, Ti and V metals Purification of refractory metals Plasma arc furnace equipped with [166]
transferred arc plasma
Commercial terbium metal Purification of refractory metals Plasma arc melting furnace [167]
Commercial Ti sponges Purification of refractory metals Lab-scale plasma arc furnace [168]
equipped with transferred arc
plasma
Galvanic sludge Processing and recovery of metal DC non-transferred arc plasma [169]
resources and DC transferred arc plasma
Powdered electroplating Processing and recovery of metal DC non-transferred arc plasma [73]
sludge resources
Fly ash, sludge and glass Treatment of other metal Plasma melting chamber [170]
wastes (1:1:2) containing material
Incinerated ash Treatment of other metal 100 kW non-transferred plasma [12]
containing material
SiO2 –Al2 O3 mixture Treatment of other metal Ar and Ar-H2 plasma jets [171]
containing material
LRW LRW treatment Plasma arc melting system [172]

demonstrated that transferred arc plasma is more efficient than reclaim metals from metallurgical wastes due to its high produc-
non-transferred arc plasma. However, the limitation with the for- tion rate, short treatment duration and bulk production ability. It
mer is the difficulty to ignite. It should be noted that the addition is worth noting that the production efficiency can be further im-
of quartz sand is of paramount importance vis-à-vis inactivation of proved by altering the torch configurations and optimizing the op-
the metals. Moreover, the generated inert by-products can be dis- erational conditions.
posed without any ecological risks or can be utilized as construc-
tion materials. 4.3.5. Metals from slag
The aluminum production process generates huge fractions of
4.3.4. Metals from metallurgical waste aluminum slag (dross) which contains large amounts (50 to 75%)
Researchers [42] used a transferred arc plasma system to re- of Al and consequently, this waste is termed as hazardous waste
cover metals from zircons with air and Ar. It was found that the [9]. Thermal plasma process to recover Al is considered efficient
zircon disintegrated into zirconia and silica when it is exposed to and eco-friendly. Researchers from the Brazilian Institute of Tech-
a temperature of 1950 K or higher [162,175]. The rated power of nology employed 300 kW plasma torch to process aluminum slag
the system was 25 kW. The investigators evaluated the impact of and reclaim Al [176]. They reported an expenditure of 82% of in-
input power, processing time and other variables on the outcomes put energy for material processing as compared to 66% in the
of the experiments. Zirconium oxide and zirconium were formed at salt furnace. However, the aluminum recovery rate in the salt
low power and short treatment duration. With the enhancement in furnace pathway was around 88% whereas plasma assisted route
the input power coupled with control on treatment time, the de- was 94%.
composition rate of zircon was raised. It is on account of the fact Canada Alcan International Corp. employed the Westinghouse
that the input power is proportional to the arc temperature, which non-transferred arc plasma torch system in a plasma ignition ro-
in turn increases the stability, thereby upsurges the heat transfer tary kiln device to reclaim Al from slag and scrap, using air as the
and consequently enhances the extent of disintegration of zircon plasma gas [30,161]. They did not add any additives rather they di-
[44]. Similarly, the decomposition of zircon increased when power rectly heated the wastes which resulted in direct separation of Al
remains the same but the duration of treatment is increased. Sil- from Al slag. The rate of recovery was exemplary with high quality
ica is transformed to SiO gas leaving zirconium oxide when the Al and an extraction efficiency of almost 100%. On the other hand,
heat treatment time was increased. It was also reported that the the processed slag was value added and was used for building ma-
impact of plasma working gas was negligible at higher power. It terial and ceramic material. In another study, American Bock Group
was noted that the product (zirconium oxide) was a monoclinic employed an AC plasma system to recover Al from dross [157].
crystalline phase with amorphous silicon. The studies prove that They reported high rate of recovery with a comparatively stable
the ThPa methods are better than the conventional methods to process.
20 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873

4.3.6. Metals from dust which represent a clean and efficient alternative energy source. Re-
The electric arc furnaces are employed in steel making process. cently, CN is also recognized as an advanced material for other ap-
These furnaces produce huge amounts (16 kg of dust per ton of plications such as electrodes of the fuel cell, battery storage, filler
steel) of dust which have large quantities of heavy metals in the of polymer, nano-composite of solar cell, high surface area cat-
form of oxides [177,178]. Consequently, this waste is not only a alysts, carbon adsorbent and super-capacitors [181,182]. Theoret-
threat to the environment but also to the health of humans and ically, it is possible to synthesize CNs from organic wastes with
animals. Plasma processes are gradually replacing the conventional simultaneous H2 (or syngas) generation with the aid of ThP, pro-
processes (pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgical) on account of vided right process conditions are met. The process can be de-
the inherent advantages to treat the electric arc furnace dust. picted as follows: organic waste + ThP → CN + H2 (or syn-
Tetronics in collaboration with Bethlehem Steel developed a gas) + vitreous slag. Many researchers [11,15,36,37,182,183] have
transferred arc plasma system with a rated capacity of 700 kW to produced high quality carbon nanospheres by ThP pyrolysis em-
treat the furnace dust with metals recovery [179,180]. Graphite was ploying a diverse range of wastes such as waste rubber, old tires,
used as the cathode. The waste material (dust) was injected from polymers etc.
the hollow cathode. The iron was reclaimed in the smelting fur-
nace whereas Zn was recovered in the condenser. In another study, 5. Mathematical modeling investigations
furnace dust was treated in a water cooled plasma torch melting
furnace with the recovery of Cu and Co [160]. The process dealt The nature of the product, product composition and other gen-
with the lead containing blast furnace slag and recovered Pb, re- eral performance measures such as process economics and energy
ducing the toxicity of the waste. efficiency in ThP assisted waste treatment processes depend on
several factors like the selection of a suitable plasma torch, plasma
gas, concentration and flow rate of feedstock and other variables.
4.3.7. Metals from other materials
Operational conditions such as pressure, temperature and gas flow
Thermal plasma is employed with Ar and Ar-H2 for the purpose
inside the reactor need to be optimized to achieve the desired
of reduction and separation of SiO2 –Al2 O3 mixture to get valuable
performance. Evaluation of optimal conditions is frequently car-
metals [171]. The key role in the reduction of SiO2 –Al2 O3 is played
ried out through experiments which are quite costly and time con-
by atomic hydrogen. The composition of SiO2 altered with tem-
suming [184]. The solution to this problem is partially provided by
perature under Ar-H2 condition. In the reductive gas phase, Si was
mathematical modelling, where models can be generated to assess
found to be more stable than SiO and SiO2 in gas phase at over
a wide spectrum of conditions, quickly and cheaply [185]. The sim-
4730 K. In addition, it was reported that the application of H2 has
ulation work saves time and resources and imparts qualitative data
negligible impact on the reduction of SiO2 under equilibrium con-
for real-life scenarios, although not as accurately as the experimen-
ditions. When the SiO2 –Al2 O3 mixture was processed for a long
tal work [186]. Such models can be employed to derive ideal con-
duration by Ar-H2 plasma, the residue layer of alumina film in-
ditions and permissible limits for the reactors and are also very
hibited the evaporation of Si and SiO, which culminated in an en-
helpful in testing a variety of waste materials and their behavior
hanced Al fraction in the collected material.
in different kinds of reactors without actually building them.
Tuan et al. [170] used co-fused fly ash and sludge wastes to
A model was developed by Minutillo and co-workers [187] to
evaluate the transformation in Cr in the wastes. Cr(OH)3 , Cr2 O3
evaluate the composition of product gas and the energy required
and CrCl3 were the major chromium compounds found in the fly
for the gasification of RDF (around 70 MW thermal power input
ash and the sludge in the temperature range of 110 0–170 0 K with
with waste). The results demonstrated that, for a better plant so-
a small fraction of Cr from CrO3 . However, CrO3 was not detected
lution, the plasma gasification efficiency is 69.1% (LHV) and LHV
in the plasma melting temperature. In addition, the leachability of
of the produced syngas is about 9 MJ/kg. The authors analyzed
Cr in the slag was low on account of the fact that the chromium in
the integration of the optimum plasma gasification system with
the slag reacts with silica to form a stable product at elevated tem-
a gas turbine combined cycle (GTCC) to assess the feasibility of
peratures. Post plasma treatment reduced toxic CrO3 to Cr2 O3 and
this technology for the energy recovery from solid wastes and the
Cr. The interconnected Cr-O-Si species was detected in the slag. In
performance of the resulting integrated plasma gasification com-
the temperature range of 110 0–130 0 K, the residence time was de-
bined cycle (IPGCC) was investigated. The system efficiency (LHV
creased resulting in the reduction of more soluble Cr.
~ 31%) was found to be very high as compared to the efficiency
of conventional incineration based technologies (20%). Galeno and
4.4. Carbon nanospheres (formation and) recovery co-workers [188] also employed RDF as the waste feedstock and
assessed the usage with a net efficiency of 31% of fuel gas for
Carbon nano-spheres (CNs) are available in different morpholo- solid oxide fuel cell. 12.9 MW was termed as the thermal input
gies and are synthesized in diverse ways. For instance, Carbon from the RDF. They reported a net electrical efficiency as 32.7% af-
Black (CB), one of the most useful CNs can be produced either by ter subtracting the power consumption by the torch and the air
incomplete combustion or by thermal decomposition of hydrocar- separation. Few researchers [189,190] employed a different tech-
bons [33]. Almost 95% of CB is being produced with the furnace nique where they gasified the waste via conventional gasification
process. This process relies on the incomplete combustion of differ- followed by deployment of plasma for product gas cleaning and
ent types of heavy carbonaceous feedstock and is characterized by tar cracking, consequently enhancing the quality of fuel gas to feed
direct CO2 emissions with an average amount of around 4 kg CO2 into the engine. Ray et al. [191] developed a model and calculated
eq. per kg of CB, giving rise to more than fifty million tons of CO2 the net electrical efficiency for a commercial scale plant as more
emissions annually [9]. The carbon nano-spheres can also be syn- than 25%. In addition, Lombardi et al. [192] applied the same ap-
thesized by other technologies including ThP arc discharge, laser proach for RDF where fuel gas is supplied to internal combustion
ablation, chemical vapor deposition, and plasma-enhanced chemi- engine and reported a net electrical efficiency of 25.3%. This effi-
cal vapor deposition [34]. The CNs have diverse applications such ciency was enhanced to 27.4% when paper residues are also added
as reinforcing fillers in tires and rubber products (belts, hoses, etc.), into the waste stream.
color pigment in plastics, paints and inks, on account of their me- In an interesting development, Mountouris et al. [193] devel-
chanical, thermal, optical and electrical properties. Another novel oped a model called GasifEq based on first and second law of
application of CNs is in the Proton Exchange Membrane fuel cells, thermodynamics for ThP gasification of solid waste using recent
 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873 21

thermodynamic data. Thermal plasma treatment process was ana- was especially useful in calculating the destruction efficiency while
lyzed for the impact of parameters, namely, moisture, amount of treating the organic matter.
oxygen and gasification temperature on the product gas compo- The modeling investigations are also carried out to evaluate the
sition and on the energy and exergy analysis. The predictive ca- ThP vitrification process. These studies assessed the relation be-
pabilities of the model include the formation of soot, selection of tween the leaching behavior and the composition of the waste
optimal variables and the need for drying of the feedstock. (or of the glassy slag) [201,202]. The modeling of oxide glasses
Agon and co-authors [194] investigated the single stage plasma or the evaluation of solubility limits of some pollutants in oxide
gasification using RDF as the feedstock employing four different glasses enable the prediction of phase separation or crystal for-
combinations of gasifying agents (CO2 + O2 , H2 O, CO2 + H2 O mation, where both have significant impact on leaching behavior
and O2 + H2 O). The composition of the generated syngas was [203,204]. Lapa and co-authors [205], examined the risks posed by
compared vis-à-vis the theoretical composition, assuming ther- leachates from the waste (fly ash) derived glasses and reported a
modynamic equilibrium. The performance of the different cases minimum ecological risk in using such products, thereby, encour-
was evaluated based on the process yields and energy efficien- aging the generation of such glasses at commercial level.
cies. The temperature range of the investigation was from 1400 Modeling studies are conducted out around the globe to en-
to 1600 K and for all the cases, they reported the generation of hance the energy recovery from the waste coupled with the reduc-
a medium calorific value syngas with lower heating values up to tion in adverse ecological impact. These objectives can be achieved
10.9 MJ/Nm3 , low levels of tar, high levels of CO and H2 and the by coupling ThP assisted waste treatment with high energy con-
results were in agreement to the equilibrium composition. version system such as highly efficient fuel cells or combined cycle
Messerle and co-workers [195] developed a thermodynamic power plants. Galeno and co-workers [188] have carried out an in-
model for the plasma gasification of MSW waste using air and vestigation with the same approach to assess the performance of
steam separately as working gases. They deduced that the max- a combined ThP gasification-fuel cell system vis-à-vis energy effi-
imum yield of product gas was achieved at 1600 K. For plasma ciency and impact on the environment. They performed the anal-
air gasification, a concentration of 84% product gas with CO as ysis by integrating thermochemical model of plasma gasification
31.7%, H2 as 50.7% and specific heat of combustion as 14267 kJ/kg and electrochemical model of solid oxide fuel cell employing As-
were predicted whereas with steam as the working medium, 94.5% pen Plus. RDF was used as waste material in a plasma arc gasifier
product gas with CO as 33.6%, H2 as 60.9% and specific heat of with air as the plasma gas. Product gas composition and the en-
combustion as 19414 kJ/kg were calculated. The specific power ergy balance of the reactor were deduced from a thermochemical
consumptions were reported as 1.92 kWh/kg and 2.44 kWh/kg for model whereas stack performance with regard to electrical power
air and steam, respectively. The calculated parameters were uti- and efficiency were predicted by an electrochemical model. They
lized to design and install a gasification plant where experiments reported a power generation of 4.2 MW per kg of RDF (net power
were conducted. In both the modeling work and experimentation, ~ 87 kW) by the integrated system, with an electrical efficiency of
no toxic contaminants were found. In addition, fuel gas with high 33%. It is worth noting that this efficiency is higher than what is
heat content was generated with the production of slag (mainly obtained with conventional RDF incinerators, which is around 20%.
iron carbide, calcium silicate, silica and iron). Modeling results In addition, it should be taken into account that even if the power
were in close agreement with the experimentally deduced results. output is less than 100 kW, the integrated system is conceived and
In a unique approach, Huang and co-authors [196] developed designed for 1 MW so that the constraints on the size on account
a model based on density functional theory (DFT) to understand of costs and components availability can be overcome.
the reaction routes of model compounds (hemicellulose, xylose, O-
acetyl xylose and 4-O-MeGlcA) and to assess the mechanism of 6. Deployment of thermal plasma waste treatment worldwide
biomass pyrolysis in the presence of hydrogen ThP. Several feasible and at industrial level
reaction pathways were taken into account and the most favorable
route was proposed after evaluation. This most desirable pathway The market of ThP assisted waste treatment is gaining momen-
predicts CO, H2 , CO2 and C2 H2 as the major products of hemicellu- tum globally. It is on account of various reasons such as the capa-
lose pyrolysis in ThP with H2 as the working gas. It was reported bility of plasma to treat any kind of wastes (especially hazardous
that all three cardinal components of biomass, namely, cellulose, waste), potential to recover energy and other value added prod-
hemicellulose and lignin play a key role in the formation and dis- ucts, high destruction efficiency, and environment-friendliness. In
tribution of final products. CO and H2 were generated by cellu- addition, the plasma system does not require much space as it
lose, hemicellulose and lignin whereas CO2 was mainly produced is compact in design. Consequently, it is also employed on board
by hemicellulose and C2 H2 coming from hemicellulose. They also cruisers to treat ship board wastes. Due to the rising popularity,
reported that active H in plasma was found to be vital for dehydro- the demand for plasma torches and plasma systems are encourag-
genation reactions in DFT calculations, which were the main source ing the companies to design and manufacture them at industrial
of extra hydrogen. This study emphatically reflects the usefulness scale. In the following sections, a brief overview of plasma waste
of DFT as a tool to understand different mechanisms related to ThP conversion at industrial scale along with the present status of ThP
assisted waste treatment. plants for waste treatment in the USA, the European Union and
Nowadays, advanced 3-D CFD codes are employed in combi- Asia is given.
nation with the chemical reaction kinetics to develop advanced It is worth noting that in waste valorization, arc plasmas are
models for the optimization of the plasma reactor design. The preferred vis-à-vis other sources of plasmas on account of its rel-
phenomenon of the mixing of waste stream with plasma is pre- ative insensitivity to process conditions. On the other hand, tra-
dicted by many modeling studies along with the reactions of the ditional MW discharges necessitates the discharge to be a part
volatile species inside the plasma reactor [65,197,198]. Colombo of the MW circuit. Consequently, it limits the flexibility of dis-
et al. [199] used arc in a twin torch reactor to develop the model charge parameters (configuration and size of plasma volume) for
whereas Barthelemy et al. [200] illustrated the twin torch reac- MW plasma [27]. As far as RF plasma is concerned, vigilant op-
tor along with the melting of the waste in a cold wall crucible timization of the injection location and of the gas flow rates are
with the creation of the skull. On the other hand, investigations demanded while feeding waste into the RF torch. In addition, flex-
conducted by Murphy et al. [198] and Hanus et al. [197] coupled ibility in RF plasma with respect to torch power and plasma gas
their fluid dynamics models with reaction kinetics. This technique flow rates and its heating efficiencies are comparatively lower than
22 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873

Fig. 16. Hybrid water-gas DC plasma torch [91].

Fig. 17. Plasma reactor (PLASGAS) at the Institute of Plasma Physics, Prague [91].

the arc plasma torches [9]. These reasons make arc plasmas as the in Fig. 17. The power loss to the walls at different locations of the
most preferred plasma source for a significant fraction of waste reactor is analyzed from calorimetric measurements on cooling cir-
treatment plants, worldwide. A schematic of hybrid water-gas DC cuits. The waste is fed into the reactor by screw feeder which is
plasma torch is depicted in Fig. 16 regulated. The material enters the plasma jet at a location about
Plasma torch with hybrid water/gas stabilization of arc is at- 500 mm downstream of plasma input. Some O2 is sent to the re-
tached at the top of the reactor (PLASGAS) as shown in Fig. 17 [91]. actor to balance the total molar fractions of carbon and oxygen in
The water-cooled walls of the reactor are detached from the inner the input reagents. The oxygen fraction is enhanced by adding CO2 ,
reactor volume by 400 mm thick sandwich ceramic walls in or- H2 O or O2 to obtain an equivalence ratio close to 1. The gaseous
der to decrease the power loss. The temperature of inner surface products are fed to the quenching chamber to decrease their tem-
of ceramic insulation is measured at several positions as depicted perature to about 300 °C with the aid of H2 O spray with automat-
 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873 23

Fig. 18. Europlasma reactor with 500 kW plasma torch in CENON for fly ash vitrification [9].

Table 8 ersol Technologies, Bellwether Gasification Technologies, Startech

Major DC plasma technologies employed at industrial-scale worldwide [8,9,47,48].
Environmental, Green Power Systems, Hitachi Metals, etc. have
Technology Company Country Production (MW) adopted the designs and technologies of Europlasma, Westing-
Tetronics Advanced Plasma Power Belgium 100.0 house and Phoenix to develop their own facilities whereas others
Europlasma CHO-Power UK 37.5 (such as Pyrogenesis, PEAT, InEnTec) have adopted to make home-
Westinghouse Green Power Systems USA 35.0 made torches [216-224]. These homemade technologies are largely
Europlasma Sunbay Energy Corp. Canada 26.0 based on DC torches, however, there is a lack of information in
Europlasma Enviroparks Ltd. UK 20.0
the published literature. Many laboratories such as Applied Plasma
Tetronics Advanced Plasma Power UK 17.0
Tetronics Advanced Plasma Power UK 16.3 Technologies in USA, PERSEE MINES Paristech in France, Institute
Westinghouse Maharastra Env. Power India 1.6 of Electrophysics and Electric Power in Russia are developing and
PSC Plasco Energy Group Canada 1(/ton) testing other plasma torch technologies such as AC and RF at pilot
scale [8]. However, these technologies are not yet validated at in-
dustrial scale for waste treatment. A three-jet plasma reactor (200
ically regulated flow rate. Then, the gas is exhausted by the water kW) with electric arc plasma generators for the destruction of pes-
jet pump into the filter and cyclone where solid particles are sep- ticides is reflected in Fig. 19 whereas Tetronics single-torch trans-
arated. A water ejector installed between the filter and the cyclone ferred arc reactor is shown in Fig. 20. The operating powers of
maintains the reactor slightly under-pressure (of several hundreds Tetronics single torch reactor may vary widely from 200 kW to
of Pa). Finally, the gas is combusted in the afterburning chamber. 1200 kW for metal cathodes and it may extend up to 2.75 MW
for high current graphite cathodes [9].
6.1. Thermal plasma assisted waste conversion at industrial scale A live example of industrial scale ThP assisted waste-to-energy
is a plasma gasification facility at Ottawa, Canada developed
Presently, the major fraction of the market for high power by Plasco Energy Group to treat garbage from Trail Road land-
plasma torches is shared by four companies, namely, Westing- fill [48,226]. This facility can process the waste at the rate of
house, Europlasma, Tetronics and Phoenix Solutions Company. 94 tons/d and generates electricity and vitrificates which is used
Technologies developed and employed by Phoenix, Europlasma and as road construction material. The garbage undergoes pretreatment
Westinghouse are based on DC torches (both transferred and non- (shredding + metal recovery) prior to being fed to the plasma re-
transferred) using water cooled metal electrodes [8,127,206-210]. actor. The waste is heated up to around 970 K before reaching
On the other hand, Tetronics employs transferred DC torches with the gasification zone which at 1270 K. The raw product gas is
two graphite electrodes [211,212]. A schematic of Europlasma reac- exited from the top of the reactor, cooled with the removal of con-
tor in CENON for fly ash vitrification is depicted in Fig. 18. Tetron- taminants such as acidic gases and sulfur. The product gas is fed
ics in collaboration with Advanced Plasma Power is developing to an internal combustion engine and steam turbine to produce
and commercializing ThP assisted waste-to-energy plants based electricity. The off-gases are passed through air emission control
on transferred DC technique [213]. Westinghouse and Europlasma equipment prior to their release to the atmosphere. The bottom
have established plasma waste-to-energy processes based on their ash undergoes vitrification in the presence of plasma, recovered
own technologies. They have also developed market turnkey plants from the bottom of the reactor and employed as road filler ma-
via subsidiaries such as Alter NRG for Westinghouse and CHO terial. The power plant generates ample electricity to sustain itself
Power for Europlasma [214,215]. Cardinal DC based plasma tech- as well as to sell to the grid. It should be noted that air emis-
nologies for waste treatment are listed in Table 8. sions from this plant are considerably lower than the permissible
Apart from these developments at industrial scale, some com- limits. Moreover, the economic evaluation reflects a net positive
panies namely, Plasma Arc Technologies, Plasco Energy Group, En- cash flow.
24 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873

Fig. 19. A three-jet plasma reactor (200 kW) with electric arc plasma generators for the destruction of pesticides [225].

ature is around 400 °C) together with the limitation of the flue
gas temperature in the super-heater below 650 °C, which results
in lower efficiency of electricity production [227]. In modern in-
cinerators, higher steam parameters are sometimes used (for ex-
ample, 60 bar and 500 °C or even higher), but this leads to the
need to use corrosion-resistant materials (such as Inconel 625) to
protect the exchangers, which also results in increased investment
costs, which pays off, however, for larger installations [230]. The
possibility for increasing the electrical efficiency is the reheating of
steam, which is again financially feasible only for the large devices
[231].
Plasma gasification, as other gasification technologies, has the
possibility to prevent high-temperature corrosion by applying the
filtration of produced calorific gas at temperatures 40 0–50 0 °C.
When the gas is cooled to this temperature, the alkaline corrosive
chlorine compounds condense on solid particles in the gas, which
are filtered off on the ceramic filters at this temperature [232].
Additionally, the filter can be dusted by suitable sorbents to en-
hance the sorption of corrosive compounds. This can significantly
Fig. 20. Tetronics single-torch transferred arc reactor (200 kW–2.75 MW) [9].
enhance the resistance of the technology to high-temperature cor-
rosion.
It is worth noting that waste-to-energy units are limited in op-
eration by the need to prevent significant high-temperature acid 6.2. Current scenario of thermal plasma assisted waste conversion
corrosion caused by metal chlorides in fly ash and high concentra- around the globe
tions of hydrogen chloride (HCl) in flue gases [227-229]. The de-
gree of high-temperature corrosion depends mainly on the surface Plasma assisted waste treatment plants are established world-
temperature of the metal; thus, to prevent high temperature cor- wide. Most of them are situated in North America, Japan and
rosion, the surface temperature of evaporators and super-heaters China. In general, the waste fed to these plants are low-moisture in
must be limited by limiting the evaporating pressure and super- nature with almost fixed composition and characteristics which do
heating temperature. In addition, it is necessary to prevent the risk not vary considerably with time, for example, fly ash, bottom ash,
of condensation during steam expansion in steam turbines, which hazardous waste, medical waste etc. These facilities have capaci-
in turn means an additional limitation for the selected evaporating ties ranging from 1 t/d–100 t/d with major fraction in the range of
pressure [230]. For these reasons, conservative steam parameters 5–30 t/d. China is leading the Asian nations in plasma waste treat-
are usually chosen (normally the maximum superheating temper- ment. The Chinese Academy of Science employed AC plasma arc
 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873 25

Table 9
Deployment of thermal plasma assisted waste treatment plants around the globe [8,10,206-210,212-220,222-224,226,230,233,234].

Waste Capacity (t/d) Continent/Country Year of commissioning

Americas
Construction 18.0 Madison/Pennsylvania 2009
Ammunition 10.0 Alpoca, Virginia 2003
Munitions 10.0 Hawthorne, Nevada 2006
MSW 2.5 Montreal, Canada 2001
MSW, hazardous, industrial solid 10.5 US Army 2011
Hazardous 4.0 Richland, Washington 2002
Medical 1.0 Honululu, Hawaii 2001
Shipboard 7.0 US Navy 2004
Refrigerant 1.2 Quebec, Canada 2013
Europe
LRW 6.0-9.5 Moscow, Russia 2002
LRW 5.0 Kozloduy, Bulgaria 2010
MSW ash 10.0 Bordeaux, France 1998
Industrial solid 10.0 Kedzierzyn-Kozle, Poland 2010
Asbestos 30.0 Morcenx, France 2001
Tannery 15.0 Bergen, Norway 2001
Asia
LRW 5.0 Taiwan 2006
MSW, automobile shredder 300.0 Utashinai, Japan 2002
MSW, sewage sludge 25.0 Mihama-Mikata, Japan 2002
MSW, fly ash 30.0 Guangdong, China 2016
MSW ash 42.0 Shimonoseki, Japan 2002
MSW ash 30.0 Kakogawa, Japan 2003
MSW ash 10.0 Imizu, Japan 2002
MSW ash 6.0 Maizuru, Japan 2003
MSW ash 14.0 Yongin, Korea 1997
MSW ash, e-waste 5.0 Hiemji, Japan 2006
E-waste 4.0 Osaka, Japan 2006
Hazardous 68.0 Nagpur, India 2010
Hazardous 68.0 Pune, India 2009
Hazardous chemical 3.0 Sichuan, China 2006
Hazardous, industrial solid 3.0-5.0 Tainan, Taiwan 2005
Hazardous, industrial solid 0.5 Taiwan 2007
Hazardous, industrial solid 1.5 Taiwan 2011
Industrial solid 10.0 Iizuka, Japan 2004
POPs, Medical 5.0 Shanxi, China 2008
Medical, fly ash 30.0 Shanghai, China 2014
Medical 1.5 Shanghai, China 2013

technology in the early 1990s to process medical waste, hazardous ated by US army), not only due to the financial, organizational and
waste and fly ash. In the past decade, China has formed lucrative planning faults, but also due to a number of technological bottle-
policies to attract plasma companies to install plasma waste pro- necks which proved to be insurmountable in some cases. Further-
cessing facilities to treat the waste as well as to produce energy more, the availability of these plants is lower than for combustion
and value added materials. Municipal solid waste which has the (80 0 0 h per year).
highest generation worldwide contains high water fraction and its One of the important elements for a project to become success-
composition varies significantly, which necessitates more investi- ful is the location of the plasma gasification unit. The location is
gations to explore an efficient treatment coupled with energy and crucial in securing a constant availability of waste for the plant.
material recovery. Table 9 reflects major plasma waste processing The development of a plasma treatment facility is therefore often
facilities worldwide along with the feedstock, capacity and year of a cooperative effort between local private and/or intercommunal
commissioning. (waste) syndicates, the technology providing company and possi-
A number of the plasma gasification facilities are for research bly a company for the downstream use of the gasification prod-
and/or demonstration purposes. The configuration of these instal- ucts. Similar to the availability of the input, there should also be a
lations differs in the type of gasifier, the type of thermal plasma stable market for the output of the plant, whether it is electricity
used (AC or DC, transferred or non-transferred and water-stabilized and/or heat, or chemicals. It is clear that a well-defined structure
or gas-stabilized torches), in the position and purpose of the and direct ion for the purpose of the plasma gasification unit from
plasma unit (single- or two-stage systems), the material treated the input to the output is needed.
and the oxidizing medium. Plasma gasification reactors need to be able to handle multiple
It should be noted that there exists only a limited number of tons of waste per hour in order to be financially viable. Because
industrial-scale plasma waste treatment installations which have the technology is relatively new, many of the technology providers
been in operation for some years, but the plasma gasification de- only have a pilot -scale installation capable of processing a cou-
velopment is further increasing all over the world. The publicly ple of tons per day. This means that the capacity of the proposed
available information about industrial-scale commercial plasma reactor systems is often up to two orders of magnitude larger
gasification facilities is often very scarce. A rather high number of than the proven demonstration unit. One of the consequences
launched plasma gasification projects have failed or have been de- of design flaws due to overambitious up-scaling are cold spots
commissioned (for example, in Table 9, plants in Hawthorne, Rich- leading to incomplete gasification. Other technological problems
land, Honululu and Utashinai, Japan, along with the plant oper- can include the material for refractory lining, high temperature
26 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873

Table 10
Major plasma assisted metal recovery plants with key operating parameters worldwide.

Waste Plasma system Carrier gas Plasma Recovered Country

power (kW) metal Reference

Waste circuit boards Thermal plasma torch system Nitrogen Air - Ag, Au, Cu, Pt China [165]
E-waste 35 kW DC extended transferred arc Argon 35 Cu, Fe, Al, Ni, India [40]
plasma Co, Au, Ag
Circuit boards Thermal plasma treatment Argon 30 Cu Canada [163]
Red mud 35 kW DC extended transferred arc Argon 12.5 Fe India [41]
plasma
Red mud DC extended transferred arc plasma - 35 Fe India [39]
Galvanic sludge DC non-transferred arc plasma Argon-hydrogen 7-16 Cr, Ni, Zn Japan [73]
Hydrogen Nitrogen
Galvanic sludge DC non-transferred arc plasma and DC Argon - Cr, Zn, Fe Brazil [169]
transferred arc plasma
Commercial terbium Plasma arc melting furnace Argon Hydrogen - Tb (refining) China [167]
metal
Commercial Ti sponges A lab-scale plasma arc furnace Argon Hydrogen 4.3 Ti (refining) Japan [168]
Zircon 25 kW IGBT based DC power Air 25 Zr Canada [42]
Zircon DC plasma torch Nitrogen-hydrogen 25 Zr Australia [162]
A dust separated from RF thermal plasma reactor Argon 1-3 Zn Hungary [164]
the flue gas of a
Siemens-Martin
furnace (SMD) and the
sludge from the hot
galvanizing of steel
products
Aluminum dross 300 kW plasma torch Argon-air 300 Al USA [9]
Direct reduction iron Pilot scale DC plasma arc furnace - 400 Fe Britain [160]
Incinerated ash 100 kW non-transferred arc plasma Nitrogen 100 - China [12]

corrosion, and particulates build-up and clogging of piping and the low the permissible limits and the leaching of toxic materials from
afterburner. the glassy slag is within the regulations [10]. As a matter of fact,
Adding these challenges to the technological barriers inherent the plasma waste treatment reduces the already existing load on
to plasma torches (such as torch efficiencies and electrode life- the environment by safely treating the hazardous waste and other
time), it becomes evident that a plasma gasification project needs wastes which are sent to the overflowing landfills. Although the
to be very well engineered in order to benefit from the potential costs associated with installation and operation of plasma plants
of the technology. are very high on account of expensive equipment, demand for
Thermal plasma is employed around the globe for metal re- large amounts of electricity and necessity of highly skilled techni-
covery from metal containing wastes such as red mud, electronic cians and labor, the successful operations of various plants around
wastes, waste circuit boards, galvanic sludge, aluminum dross, in- the globe reflects positive economics [235-237]. The tipping fees
cinerated ash etc. Several nations (USA, Canada, China, Japan, Aus- coupled with value added by-products and end products improves
tralia, Brazil, India, etc.) have conducted studies based on thermal the economics of plasma treatment. The flipside is the usage of
plasma technologies to treat these wastes and reclaim the valu- the most useful form of energy, i.e. electrical energy. However, this
able metals. Most of the investigations have used DC transferred limitation can be countered by making the plant self-sustaining
and non-transferred arc plasma systems. However, some have em- w.r.t energy and reducing the operational costs by recycling and
ployed RF based systems as well. A vast number of assessments utilizing the energy content of the materials [238].
have used Ar, N2 and air as the working gas while few have used
H2 or combinations of them. Valuable metals such as Ag, Au, Cu, 7.1. Effect on environment
Pt, Fe, Ni, Co, Al, Zn, etc. were successfully and efficiently recov-
ered from the wastes and recycled. Table 10 shows various inves- As seen in the previous sections, the product gas formed in
tigations around the globe to process the metal containing wastes the plasma process is cleaner in nature on account of the very
with reclamation of valuable metals. high temperatures compared with the conventional gasification
The studies related to the recovery of metals from metal con- processes and there is no need for product gas cleaning. The final
taining wastes are still at infancy stage and there is a lack of data emissions to the atmosphere is a function of the extent of clean-
to establish large-scale facilities. In addition, there is still a huge ing of the fuel gas with an exception of NOx which is not formed
potential to improve the process efficiency. As far as waste pro- during gasification, though NOx can be formed during the combus-
cessing is concerned, the world is moving ahead with successful tion of the producer gas. Another advantageous feature of thermal
operation of plasma waste treatment plants on account of its high assisted reductive waste treatment processes is the prevention of
destruction efficiency and eco-friendly nature. Moreover, plasma the formation of dioxins and furans. They are avoided on account
plants have reduced a considerable amount of pressure from the of elevated temperatures during plasma treatment, however, they
already overflowing landfills. It is worth noting that plasma treat- can reappear during the cooling of product gas. Rapid cooling or
ment plant can be more economical than a conventional incinera- quenching can inhibit the reappearance of dioxins and furans at
tion plant provided energy and value added products are reclaimed the cost of heat loss. Emissions to water comes up with the fuel
as discussed in Section 7.2. gas cleaning process and will lead to the increase of salts in the
water which necessitates processing to generate a solid residue or
7. Impact on environment and economics disposal to sewer. The vitrified ash has low leachability which is
within the permissible limits and can be used in a variety of ap-
The plasma assisted waste conversion is found to have no ad- plications including road construction, building materials, ceram-
verse influence on the environment. The off gases are well be- ics, etc. Table 11 lists the major pollutants likely to be generated
 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873 27

Table 11
Main pollutants likely to be produced during plasma process.

Pollutant Definition Impact Solution

PCDD It is a chemical compound present in They deposit in living beings and (1) Limit Cl input in feedstock
the molecule of Polychlorinated cause abnormalities in physiological (2) Cold quenching
Dibenzo Dioxins family. development including mutation and (3) Catalytic combustion
cancer.
TCDD It is Tetrachlorinated Dibenzo Dioxins. They provoke DNA damage in humans (1) Limit Cl input in feedstock
and wild life. (2) Cold quenching
(3) Catalytic combustion
PCB It is Polychlorinated Biphenyls. They are stable compounds and likely (1) Very high temperatures
to be carcinogens. With partial (2) Catalysis
oxidation, they generate dibenzo
dioxins and dibenzo furans.
Volatile Low boiling points metals evaporate Large quantities can cause tremors, (1) Carbon filters
metals in high temperature environment. headaches, infertility, anxiety and (2) Condense to PM and employ PM
depression. separation methods
HCl Hydrochloric acid is a strong mineral It can irritate the lungs, causing a Scrubber
acid and highly corrosive. cough and shortness of breath. High
levels can lead to a build-up of fluid
in the lungs, which may cause death.
It can cause eye damage, even
blindness.
SOx Oxides of Sulfur It irritates the nose, throat, and (1) Restrict Sulfur mass input
airways to cause coughing, wheezing, (2) Scrubber
shortness of breath, or a tight feeling
around the chest.
Particulate Small particles present in off-gases. It adversely affects lungs and heart Inertial separation, baghouse, scrubbers,
matter and causes respiratory and cardiac electrostatic precipitators (ESP)
(PM) problems.
CO Carbon Monoxide In big amounts, CO replaces the O2 in (1) Process design
the blood, disable the functioning of (2) Carbon filters
brain and causes slow death. (3) Re-burning
CO2 Carbon Dioxide It leads to global warming. (1) In situ capture
(2) Geological sequestration
Tars It is a thick and viscous liquid It causes dizziness, asthma, nausea (1) Thermal cracking
containing heavy aromatic and responsible for respiratory and (2) Steam reforming
hydrocarbons. cardiac problems. (3) Dry reforming
(4) Carbon formation
(5) Partial oxidation

Table 12 SPE tubes were preconditioned with 2.5 ml of dichloromethane

Concentrations of the most abundant tar species (mg/Nm3 ) in three samples (S1, S2
(DCM). Three syngas samples of 60 0–90 0 ml were taken from the
and S3).
gas flow over the course of the experiment. Analytes were des-
Tar species S1 S2 S3 orbed by DCM and the fractions were analyzed by GC-FID. The
BTX 0 1.4 1.1 total tar content of these samples varied between 132 and 543
Naphthalene 78.6 205.8 155.5 mg/Nm3 . From Table 12, it can be seen that the condensed tertiary
Methylnaphthalene 1.8 8.1 2.7 products (such as naphthalene, acenaphthylene and phenanthrene)
Acenaphthylene 7.4 90.7 35.8
were most abundant in the syngas samples, while the concentra-
Acenaphthene 2.7 7.6 5.7
Phenanthrene 8.6 7.3 51.6 tion of the benzene–toluene–xylene (BTX) fraction remained very
Anthracene 0.7 6.9 2.0 low. This is in line with the chemical components generally found
Pyrene 7.2 31.9 29.6 with high-temperature steam gasification.
Fluorene 1.8 12.6 3.9
The measured tar content in the syngas produced from RDF
Fluoranthene 6.7 32.3 32.9
Biphenyl 3.2 21.1 12.4 plasma gasification was higher than the tar content in the syngas
from biomass plasma gasification (10 mg/Nm3 ) in the same reactor
[115], most likely because of the heterogeneous nature of the RDF
and the coarser particle size. On the other hand, the tar level was
during the process along with their impact and how to get rid of lower than in the syngas obtained from conventional RDF gasifica-
them [235,239-247]. tion, which is typically in the range of 1–100 g/Nm3 , depending on
As sufficiently high temperatures and homogeneous tempera- the type of gasifier. Nevertheless, a cleaning step would be neces-
ture distribution can be easily maintained in the whole plasma re- sary prior to downstream application of the syngas produced from
actor volume, the production of complex hydrocarbons, tars and RDF plasma gasification to a gas engine, gas turbine or fuel cell,
other molecules is substantially reduced in comparison with incin- which have tar tolerance levels of about 50, 5 and 1 mg/Nm3 , re-
eration. spectively.
Due to a lack of publicly available data from commercial in- In an interesting and valuable study conducted by Herva and
stallations, an example of tar analysis of syngas performed after Roca [248], the impact of different MSW treatment pathways was
plasma gasification of RDF in the research reactor at the Institute assessed based on ecological footprint and multi-criteria analysis.
of Plasma Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague is They employed numerous environmental and sustainability indica-
given in Table 12 [91,194]. The solid phase adsorption/extraction tors in their investigation. In addition, they highlighted integrative
(SPA/SPE) method was used for tar sampling. Tar vapours were ad- frameworks to obtain a more all-inclusive evaluation. Their objec-
sorbed on to aminopropyl-bonded silica (Discovery DSC-NH2). The tives included identification of the most advantageous waste treat-
28 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873

ment pathway from an environmental viewpoint and, comparison 40% of the impact of the air blown gasifier system and 45% of the
of the results obtained from two different methods (1. ecological fast pyrolyzer with gasifier. For the EP impact category, the best
footprint as single composite indicator and 2. multi-criteria anal- performance with 1.4 × 10−4 kg phosphate eq. was again shown by
ysis which integrates ecological footprint with other material flow the plasma pathway. However, the incineration process reflected a
indicators). They compared four different routes for MSW process- lower POCP impact vis-à-vis the plasma process with -1.5 × 10−4
ing, namely, thermal plasma gasification, incineration with energy kg ethane eq. for incineration and -8.6 × 10−5 kg ethane eq. per
recovery, biological processing of organic fraction with energy re- kg of waste for dual plasma process. It was on account of higher
covery from RDF, and landfilling. The acquired results in both the amounts of secondary aggregates which can be reclaimed from in-
cases proved that thermal plasma gasification is the best method cineration plant. These conclusions emphatically reveal the poten-
to treat the wastes followed by biological treatment, incineration tial of plasma pathway to emerge as an environment friendly tech-
and landfilling (as the worst route). It should be noted that the nology for MSW processing as compared to other traditional and
ranking obtained was in agreement with the general hierarchy rec- advanced technologies.
ommended by the governmental agencies which prefer waste pro-
cessing technologies with energy and/or materials recovery. 7.2. Economics
Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an influential tool that assists in
the quantification of environmental impacts caused throughout the Wastes, in principle, have a negative value and therefore, the
waste treatment process, from waste reception to its treatment and technique or process which adds value to it should ideally de-
finally to disposal of the residues. Ramos and co-workers [249] in crease the cost of treatment / disposal. The cost of waste dis-
an important study conducted LCA of 2-stage plasma gasification posal is dependent on governmental framework and consequently,
of MSW which comprised of MSW gasification (first stage), plasma it is more for hazardous wastes than for non-hazardous wastes.
treatment of tars and gases (second stage), syngas processing and The cardinal advantages with thermal plasma assisted waste trans-
landfill of the inert products. A comparison to a typical inciner- formation processes vis-à-vis other processes are comparatively
ation plant was also carried out regarding environmental perfor- reduced exit gases, higher volume reduction, installations with
mance and efficiency. They reported plasma gasification pathway smaller footprints, faster start-up and shut-down times and, lower
to offer savings up to 260 tons of energy resources, 130 tons of costs for a specified throughput. Strict emission based standards
material resources and similar amount of emissions to fresh water make combustion based waste treatment costly whereas storage
as main flows whereas incineration achieved an avoided burden of costs and lack of space makes landfilling difficult or impossible.
more than 20 tons of deposited goods, albeit with an environmen- In these cases, (especially in the cases of hazardous wastes such
tal threat of 5 tons of material resources and 4 tons of emissions to as low level radioactive wastes), plasma processing becomes more
air. In addition, Global Warming Potential (GWP) of -31 kg CO2 eq., economical and thus, attractive. Although smaller mobile plasma
Eutrophication Potential (EP) of -1.55 × 103 kg PO4 3− eq., Acidifi- waste processing plants sound attractive on account of zero waste
cation Potential (AP) of -39.7 × 10−2 kg SO2 eq. and Photochemi- transportation cost and lower investment cost, in reality they are
cal Ozone Creation Potential (POCP) of -2.23 × 10−2 kg ethene eq. costly due to enhanced labor costs [9]. Mustoe and co-authors
were found emphatically reflecting environmental benefits vis-à- [252] examined diverse operating cost elements that are accounted
vis savings of natural resources coupled with decreased pollutant in the process economics per ton of waste, for a plasma vitrifica-
emissions. tion plant. They assumed 24 h operation for 300 days per year.
Tagliaferri et al. [250] in an interesting work, evaluated the en- They constituted four operating groups with three persons in each
vironmental efficacy of traditional and advanced MSW processing group. The total lifetime of the installation was taken as 8 years
pathways (anaerobic digestion, incineration and dual stage plasma with linear depreciation with electricity cost as USD 0.06 per kWh.
gasification) to generate Bio-SNG. Two different approaches were They deduced that electricity costs can be reduced to a significant
adopted, namely, (1) best waste treatment pathway vis-à-vis envi- extent by employing the exhaust gases for power generation. In
ronment and (2) renewable CH4 generation, with functional units addition, they revealed that operating with a throughput of more
as 1 kg of MSW and 1 MJ of CH4 generated, respectively for the than 100 t/d was advantageous.
two approaches. As far as GWP was concerned, thermal plasma Heberlein and co-authors [9] have provided an interesting anal-
technology did not emerge as a favorable alternative as it was in ysis of profitability of destruction of ozone depleting substances
its infancy state and also as a result of the current UK energy mix. (OD) by thermal plasma as compared to incineration. In general
The authors also examined the projection of GWP for the processes ODs are found in concentrated form and therefore, thermal en-
studied till 2035 accounting for future energy scenarios and found ergy is not used in heating non-hazardous fractions. Moreover, ODs
that when the problem of renewable energy generation was solved have a high value for halogen-to-carbon ratio and consequently, a
(functional unit 1 MJ of CH4 ), the current GWP reflected that the major cost associated to ODs destruction is due to neutralizing the
best pathway for MSW processing would be the two stage thermal released acid gases. Although this is the same for all the pathways,
plasma gasification as a result of a higher efficiency in CH4 gener- the cost enhances with high gas flow rates. Plasma treatment with
ation. lower gas flow rates is therefore economical. Furthermore, incin-
Evangelisti and co-workers [251] compared the environmental eration is impaired by high fluorine concentrations (HF) in ODs
effects of three different advanced MSW processing routes (gasifi- which necessitates alterations in the scrubbing systems. Even then,
cation followed by plasma gas cleaning, fast pyrolysis followed by the fluorine content in the feed should be restricted to 1%. Nothing
combustion, and gasification with syngas combustion) with tradi- of this sort is required in plasma treatment.
tional technologies (landfill with electricity generation and inciner- Researchers [10] have examined the process economics for a
ation followed by electricity production). They demonstrated that MSW plasma gasification plant with a treatment capacity of 600
the environmental efficacy of two stage plasma gasification was tons/d. The total investment was USD 99.3 million whereas the ex-
considerably higher than the conventional waste treatment path- tracted gains were on account of electricity, glassy slag, foam glass
ways and slightly better than an advanced incineration plant (at and subsidy. They assumed the selling price of power as 9.7 cents
Lincolnshire in the UK). It was on account of higher net electri- per kWh and they sold around 350 kWh/t. Therefore, the income
cal efficiency of dual plasma gasification. The finest efficacy for was around USD 6.67 million per year. The glassy slag and foam
GWP was reflected by plasma process with GWP as 0.18 kg CO2 slag were generated at the rates of 90 0 0 0 tons per year and 10 0 0 0
eq./kWh which was only 30% of the Sheffield incineration plant, tons per year respectively. The former was sold at a rate of USD
 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873 29

105/t whereas latter was sold at USD 1080.8/t making the earnings to air, water, land and soil pollution. This calls for sustainable al-
as USD 9.45 million and USD 10.81 million per year respectively. It ternatives which have the potential for climate change mitigation
was assumed that the plant got a subsidy of USD 9.26/t making it with minimum (or negative) greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover,
USD 1.85 million. Thus, the total revenue generation for a year was these pathways should be economical and should not have an ad-
around USD 28.87 million. On the other hand, the income from verse influence on the ecology or the society. Thermal plasma as-
conventional incineration plants does not exceed USD 9.5 million. sisted waste processing technologies have the potential to include
According to this study, the economic returns are almost 3 times all these characteristics. However, lack of understanding of the pro-
vis-à-vis traditional incineration units. cess coupled with high installation and operation costs, and the
E.N. Kalogirou [253] in his book titled “Waste-to-Energy Tech- utilization of the most useful form of energy (electricity) as input,
nologies and Global Applications” discussed a waste-to-energy are the key obstacles in the deployment of plasma processes to
tool/business model. It pre-calculates and predesigns different a greater extent. These issues should not be allowed to divert us
types of waste-to-energy plants worldwide, taking into consider- from taking the essential steps to exploit the major potential ad-
ation multi-parameters such as the composition and calorific value vantages of plasma processes and encouraging them more widely.
of the input waste, local climate conditions, the gross domestic A deep understanding and knowledge of the plasma assisted
product (GDP), social/financial conditions, and so on. An indicative waste treatment processes along with the alternative approaches
range of initial capital expense (CAPEX) for the construction of a are required for optimization and advancements in an economi-
WTE plant is 450–900 USD per ton of annual capacity (tpa). The cal manner. The in-depth survey throughout this paper has pro-
annual operational costs (OPEX) are influenced by various factors. vided evidence about various kinds of wastes and their applicabil-
A safe range to be used in case of lack of sufficient data, is from 2% ity to the plasma process. The impacts of different plasma torches
to 3% of the facility’s capital investment. As an example of thermal and reactor designs on the properties and yields of the byprod-
plasma WTE, an installation in South Korea for 10 tpd (3300 tpa) ucts and co-products have been discussed with the aim to help
MSW is mentioned with a CAPEX of 3 million USD. the optimization of future research and the process as a whole.
From the scarce published literature and private communica- Plasma gasification / pyrolysis coupled with vitrification are inter-
tions, some more examples of ThP WTE plants are (i) China [10]: esting and potentially economical ways to optimize wastes utiliza-
MSW plasma gasification plant with a treatment capacity of 600 tion. More novel technologies, such as plasma assisted metal re-
tons/d. The estimate of CAPEX was about USD 99.3 million, (ii) covery and purification from metal containing wastes could be the
Saudi Arabia [254]: 100 tpd of mixed solid waste was produced influential pathways to extract the maximum possible value from
during the pilgrimage season in Makkah. The first estimate of the wastes and it also demonstrate the developments and opportu-
CAPEX was around 37 million USD, and (iii) Morocco (private com- nities in plasma processes. The progress in modelling is paving the
munication): 250 0 0 0 tpa of MSW with an estimate of CAPEX as way for future expansion in discovering and designing new plasma
100 million USD. These examples indicate that the CAPEX for ThP torches and new processes, to make the process cost-effective and
WTE plants is within the range mentioned by Kalogirou [253], but operate with a higher efficiency. Although plasma processes have
at the higher side, as expected. some flip sides such as the utilization of electricity as input and
There are some other economic indicators such as Net Present high installation costs, they can be minimized through appropriate
Value (NPV) and Internal Rate of Return (IRR) which reflect the technological (for e.g. using renewable and off-peak electricity) and
profitability and return characteristics and serve as assets to com- policy implementations (for e.g. subsidies). In addition, the current
pare different technologies vis-à-vis economics. NPV is the present scenario of plasma waste processing facilities around the globe has
worth of an investment and basically represents the difference be- been explored. This paper presents a positive case for plasma as-
tween the present value of the expenses and the present value of sisted processes for waste treatment coupled with material and en-
the revenues, recognizing the money update. On the other hand, ergy recovery as a promising, viable and economically beneficial
IRR represents the interest rate that equals the present value of technology. It has been shown that the process is not limited to
the future incomes to the initial cost [255]. Therefore, IRR defines a particular feedstock and specific product, but is flexible towards
the interest rate that causes the NPV to be zero. It denotes a prof- the treatment of wide variety of wastes that may be toxic or con-
itability measure defining the maximum rate of return for viability. taminated, for the generation of diversified usable products.
Positive NPV indicates that the investment is economically feasi- The market of ThP assisted waste treatment is gaining momen-
ble, negative NPV designates an unfeasible investment and neutral tum globally. It is on account of various reasons such as the capa-
NPV shows a potentially feasible investment with a return equal to bility of plasma to treat any kind of wastes (especially hazardous
the IRR. An interesting account of NPV/IRR evaluation for a plasma waste), potential to recover energy and other value added prod-
waste treatment plant can be found elsewhere [255]. ucts, high destruction efficiency, and environment-friendliness. In
In order to completely assess the economics of a thermal addition, the plasma system does not require much space as it is
plasma based waste treatment plant, cost of the plant including compact in design.
off gases treatment, cost of required energy, flexibility vis-à-vis The challenges should be taken as an encouragement to design
waste composition, economic incentives from government, regu- and develop advanced plasma based technologies for waste pro-
lations associated with handling / processing / recycling of haz- cessing with the recovery of energy and value added materials.
ardous wastes must be taken into account. Lack of published liter- More investigations on metal reclamation and processing of high
ature disable to conclude firmly about how a more efficient trans- moisture content wastes are required to understand them com-
formation of heating value of waste to fuel gas or electricity would pletely and to ensure their holistic and sustainable implementa-
impact the economics of the plasma assisted processes vis-à-vis tion. As plasma process is a clean pathway to synthesize impor-
conventional incineration processes. tant chemicals and other value added products using renewable
electricity, more in-depth studies are needed in this area. In ad-
8. Conclusions and perspectives dition, plasma technology can play a vital role in P2X concept due
to its regulation possibilities (e.g. from 10 to 100% of power in-
A sense of concern is required among different governments put). The scale-up of the existing plants should be explored, em-
on account of the influence of traditional waste processing path- ploying new technologies with favourable governmental policies. In
ways such as landfilling, incineration, etc. on climate change be- this regard, a collective effort by scientists and engineers, environ-
cause of greenhouse gas emissions and due to their contribution mentalists and policy-makers is very crucial to ensure the effective
30 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873

incorporation of plasma waste processing in our society for a sus- References

tainable and eco-friendly future.
Some examples of perspective applications are: [1] Eurostat. Statistical office of the European Union, https://ec.europa.eu/
eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=File:Waste_generation_by_
• Nowadays sewage sludge utilization is one of the main issues of economic_activities_and_households, _2014-1.png [accessed: 12 May 2019].
[2] United States EPA. Facts and figures about materials, waste and recycling,
waste treatment industry. High-temperature decomposition of https://www.epa.gov/facts- and- figures- about- materials- waste- and- recycling
sludge (for example by using a plasma torch) enables safe waste [accessed: 12 May 2019].
recovery and excludes contamination by heavy metals of the re- [3] Czajczyńska D, Anguilano L, Ghazal H, Krzyżyńska R, Reynolds A, Spencer N,
Jouhara H. Potential of pyrolysis processes in the waste management sector.
sulting P-rich product. The plasma technology has the benefit Therm Sci Eng Prog 2017;3:171–97.
that besides of a P-rich product, which can be practically free [4] Sikarwar VS, Zhao M. Biomass Gasification. In: Abraham MA, editor. Encyclo-
of heavy metals, also offers very interesting co-products. pedia of sustainable technologies. Oxford: Elsevier; 2017. p. 205–16.
[5] World Bank data, https://datatopics.worldbank.org/what- a- waste/index.html
• The produced tar-free synthesis gas (syngas) can be used in the [accessed: 22 March 2020].
next cycle of the waste treatment as a fuel for a gas engine [6] Sikarwar VS, Zhao M, Clough P, Yao J, Zhong X, Memon MZ, Shah N, An-
or gas turbine to produce (peak) electrical and thermal energy thony E, Fennell P. An overview of advances in biomass gasification. Energ
Environ Sci 2016;9:2939–77.
in a combined mode (CHP). The process can be also driven to [7] Sikarwar VS, Zhao M, Fennell PS, Shah N, Anthony EJ. Progress in biofuel pro-
produce less CO and purer solid carbon with gas rich in H2 duction from gasification. Prog Energ Combust 2017;61:189–248.
(plasma pyrolysis). The high-temperature plasma treatment al- [8] Fabry F, Rehmet C, Rohani V, Fulcheri L. Waste gasification by thermal
plasma: a review. Waste Biomass Valoriz 2013;4:421–39.
lows reaching high degree of product conversion and safety due
[9] Heberlein J, Murphy AB. Thermal plasma waste treatment. J Phys D Appl Phys
to an extremely high process enthalpy. All those advantages can 20 08;41:0530 01.
be combined into new advanced valorization strategy. [10] Li J, Liu K, Yan S, Li Y, Han D. Application of thermal plasma technol-
• A plausible industrial installation could be the sustainable de- ogy for the treatment of solid wastes in China: an overview. Waste Manag
2016;58:260–9.
centralized production of hydrogen from MSW, sludge or agri- [11] Chang J, Gu B, Looy P, Chu F, Simpson C. Thermal plasma pyrolysis of used
cultural waste. The production of pure hydrogen from the rel- old tires for production of syngas. J Environ Sci Heal A 1996;31:1781–99.
atively pure syngas is a well-established, efficient and simple [12] Cheng T, Chu J, Tzeng C, Chen Y. Treatment and recycling of incinerated ash
using thermal plasma technology. Waste Manag 2002;22:485–90.
procedure. [13] Cherednichenko V, Anshakov A, Danilenko A, Michajlov V, Faleev V, Keze-
• More than 75% of the methanol volume produced comes from vich D. Domestic waste plasma gasification technology and its comparison
natural gas which is steam reformed into syngas. The plasma with ordinary one burning on the final products. In: Proceedings of the 6th
Russian-Korean international symposium on science and technology KORUS-2002
gasification technology can be an economical and environmen- (Cat No 02EX565). IEEE; 2002. p. 211–13.
tally friendly alternative for producing syngas which in turn [14] Chu J, Hwang I, Tzeng C, Kuo Y, Yu YJ. Characterization of vitrified slag from
can be used to produce methanol, where the syngas is pro- mixed medical waste surrogates treated by a thermal plasma system. J Hazard
Mater 1998;58:179–94.
duced from biomass (and also from waste) with CO2 being a [15] Huang H, Tang L, Wu C. Characterization of gaseous and solid prod-
co-reactant. The main use of methanol is as a raw material for uct from thermal plasma pyrolysis of waste rubber. Environ Sci Technol
making other chemicals. A second limited use of methanol is 2003;37:4463–7.
[16] Mohai I, Szépvölgyi J. Treatment of particulate metallurgical wastes in ther-
to provide internal combustion engines with (sustainable) fuel.
mal plasmas. Chem Eng Process 2005;44:225–9.
Therefore, plasma technology can be regarded as a carbon cap- [17] Tzeng C, Kuo Y, Huang T, Lin D, Yu Y. Treatment of radioactive wastes
ture and utilization (CCU) route. by plasma incineration and vitrification for final disposal. J Hazard Mater
• Another possible application is the use of the syngas for the 1998;58:207–20.
[18] An’Shakov A, Faleev V, Danilenko A, Urbakh E, Urbakh A. Investigation
production of electricity via steam and gas turbines. There of plasma gasification of carbonaceous technogeneous wastes. Thermophys
are already several large integrated gasification cycle cycles Aeromech 2007;14:607–16.
(IGCC) that produce electricity from lignite as raw material. The [19] Cheng T, Tu C, Ko M, Ueng T. Production of glass–ceramics from incinera-
tor ash using lab-scale and pilot-scale thermal plasma systems. Ceram Int
plasma gasification reactor can provide some additional pro- 2011;37:2437–44.
ducer gas for the already installed combined cycle. [20] Gomez E, Rani DA, Cheeseman C, Deegan D, Wise M, Boccaccini A. Thermal
plasma technology for the treatment of wastes: a critical review. J Hazard
Mater 2009;161:614–26.
Declaration of Competing Interest [21] Hetland J, Lynum S, Santen S. Advanced waste-to-energy technology offering
safe and inert rendering of residues with almost complete volume reduction.
The authors whose names are listed immediately below certify A challenge for Island sustainable development 2005:283.
[22] Lemmens B, Elslander H, Vanderreydt I, Peys K, Diels L, Oosterlinck M, Joos M.
that they have NO affiliations with or involvement in any organiza- Assessment of plasma gasification of high caloric waste streams. Waste Manag
tion or entity with any financial interest (such as honoraria; educa- 2007;27:1562–9.
tional grants; participation in speakers’ bureaus; membership, em- [23] Nema S, Ganeshprasad K. Plasma pyrolysis of medical waste. Curr Sci India
2002:271-8.
ployment, consultancies, stock ownership, or other equity interest;
[24] Goldberger W, Oxley J. Quenching the plasma reaction by means of the flu-
and expert testimony or patent-licensing arrangements), or non- idized bed. AIChE J 1963;9:778–82.
financial interest (such as personal or professional relationships, af- [25] Amouroux J, Talbot J. Conditions for methane pyrolysis in an inductive plasma
filiations, knowledge or beliefs) in the subject matter or materials of argon. Ann Chim France 1968;3:219.
[26] Bal S, Musialski A, Swierczek R. Gasification of coal fines in a laboratory plas-
discussed in this manuscript titled ‘Progress in waste utilization via ma-chemical reactor with a spouted bed [Ar plasma]. Coke Smola Gaz 1971
thermal plasma’. May 16.
[27] Boulos MI, Fauchais P, Pfender E. Thermal plasmas: fundamentals and applica-
tions. Springer Science & Business Media; 2013.
Acknowledgments [28] Chen FF. Introduction to plasma physics. Springer Science & Business Media;
2012.
Financial support from Academic Research Agency AV 21 (Ef- [29] Boulos MI. Thermal plasma processing. IEEE Trans Plasma Sci
1991;19:1078–89.
ficient energy transformation and storage), Specific University Re- [30] Drouet M. High temperature processes for industrial waste treatment and
search (Grant # A1_FTOP_2020_001) and from Technology Agency valorisation. In: Conference Proceedings-Italian Physical Society. Editrice Com-
of the Czech Republic (Projects TN010 0 0 038 and TK02030155) is positori; 1993. p. 77.
[31] Bundaleska N, Tsyganov D, Dias A, Felizardo E, Henriques J, Dias F, Abra-
gratefully acknowledged. GVO acknowledges for the partial finan-
shev M, Kissovski J, Tatarova E. Microwave plasma enabled synthesis of
cial support from MEPHI and MPEI in the framework of the Russian free standing carbon nanostructures at atmospheric pressure conditions. Phys
Academic Excellence project. Chem Chem Phys 2018;20:13810–24.
 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873 31

[32] Gautier M, Rohani V, Fulcheri L. Direct decarbonization of methane by ther- [66] Katou K, Asou T, Kurauchi Y, Sameshima R. Melting municipal solid waste in-
mal plasma for the production of hydrogen and high value-added carbon cineration residue by plasma melting furnace with a graphite electrode. Thin
black. Int J Hydrogen Energy 2017;42:28140–56. Solid Films 2001;386:183–8.
[33] Fabry F, Flamant G, Fulcheri L. Carbon black processing by thermal [67] Kim HI, Park DW. Characteristics of fly ash/sludge slags vitrified by thermal
plasma. Analysis of the particle formation mechanism. Chem Eng Sci plasma. J Ind Eng Chem 2004;10:234–8.
2001;56:2123–32. [68] Inaba T, Nagano M, Endo M. Investigation of plasma treatment for hazardous
[34] Sun D, Wang F, Hong R, Xie C. Preparation of carbon black via arc discharge wastes such as fly ash and asbestos. Electr Eng Jpn 1999;126:73–82.
plasma enhanced by thermal pyrolysis. Diam Relat Mater 2016;61:21–31. [69] Cedzynska K, Kolacinski Z, Izydorczyk M, Sroczynski W. Plasma vitrification
[35] Dave PN, Joshi AK. Plasma pyrolysis and gasification of plastics waste–a re- of waste incinerator ashes. In: Proceedings of the international ash utilization
view. J Sci Ind Res India 2010;69:177–9. symposium. Centre for Applied Energy Research, University of Kentuky; 1999.
[36] Mohsenian S, Esmaeili MS, Fathi J, Shokri B. Synthesis of carbon nano-spheres [70] Chu J, Chen Y, Mahalingam T, Tzeng C, Cheng T. Plasma vitrification and
and nano-tubes by thermal plasma processing of polypropylene. J Appl Phys re-use of non-combustible fiber reinforced plastic, gill net and waste glass.
2018;124:546. J Hazard Mater 2006;138:628–32.
[37] Mohsenian S, Esmaili MS, Fathi J, Shokri B. Hydrogen and carbon black nano– [71] Szépvölgyi J, Mohai I, Gubicza J, Sáray I. RF thermal plasma synthesis of fer-
spheres production via thermal plasma pyrolysis of polymers. Int J Hydrogen rite nanopowders from metallurgical wastes. Key engineering materials. Trans
Energy 2016;41:16656–63. Tech Publications; 2004. p. 2359–62.
[38] Huang H, Tang L. Pyrolysis treatment of waste tire powder in a capacitively [72] Best T, Pickles C. In-flight plasma reduction of electric arc furnace dust in
coupled RF plasma reactor. Energy Convers Manag 2009;50:611–17. carbon monoxide. Can Metal Quart 2001;40:61–78.
[39] Rath SS, Jayasankar K, Satapathy BK, Mishra BK, Mukherjee PS. Kinetics and [73] Ramachandran K, Kikukawa N. Plasma in-flight treatment of electroplating
statistical behaviour of iron recovery from red mud using plasma arc furnace. sludge. Vacuum 20 0 0;59:244–51.
High Temp Mater Proc 2011;30:211–15. [74] Cubas AL, Carasek E, Debacher NA, Souza IGd. Development of a DC-plasma
[40] Rath SS, Nayak P, Mukherjee PS, Chaudhury GR, Mishra B. Treatment of torch constructed with graphite electrodes and an integrated nebulization
electronic waste to recover metal values using thermal plasma coupled system for decomposition of CCl4 . J Braz Chem Soc 2005;16:531–4.
with acid leaching–a response surface modeling approach. Waste Manag [75] Carabin P, Holcroft G. Plasma Resource Recovery Technology: Converting
2012;32:575–83. Waste to Energy and Valuable Products. In: Proceedings of the 13th annual
[41] Rath SS, Pany A, Jayasankar K, Mitra AK, Kumar CS, Mukherjee PS, Mishra BK. north American waste-to-energy conference. American Society of Mechanical
Statistical modeling studies of iron recovery from red mud using thermal Engineers; 2005. p. 71–9.
plasma. Plasma Sci Technol 2013;15:459. [76] Heanley C, Chapman C, Wolf C. Plasma arc vitrification of incinerator ash. In:
[42] Yugeswaran S, Ananthapadmanabhan P, Lusvarghi L. Zircon dissociation in Proceedings of the international conference incineration and thermal treat-
air plasma through a low power transferred arc plasma torch. Ceram Int ment technologies, (Salt Lake City, UT, USA); 1998.
2015;41:265–73. [77] Burkhard R, Hoffelner W, Eschenbach R. Recycling of metals from waste with
[43] Yugeswaran S, Selvarajan V, Dhanasekaran P, Lusvarghi L. Transferred arc thermal plasma. J Resour Conserv Recycl 1994;10:11–16.
plasma processing of mullite–zirconia composite from natural bauxite and [78] Poiroux R, Rollin M. High temperature treatment of waste: from laboratories
zircon sand. Vacuum 2008;83:353–9. to the industrial stage. Pure Appl Chem 1996;68:1035–40.
[44] Yugeswaran S, Vijay M, Suresh K, Ananthapadmanabhan P, Karoly Z, Szépvöl- [79] Chan Y, Agamuthu P, Mahalingam R. Solidification and stabilization of
gyi J. Synthesis of mullite from sillimanite dissociation through transferred asbestos brake lining dust using polymeric resins. J Environ Eng Sci
arc plasma torch. Int J Miner Process 2011;99:54–60. 20 0 0;17:203–13.
[45] Chang C, Pfender E. Nonequilibrium modeling of low-pressure argon plasma [80] Chan Y, Agamuthu P, Mahalingam R. Solidification and stabilization of as-
jets; part I: laminar flow. Plasma Chem Plasma Process 1990;10:473–91. bestos waste from an automobile brake manufacturing facility using cement.
[46] Dinulescu H, Pfender E. Analysis of the anode boundary layer of high inten- J Hazar Mater 20 0 0;77:209–26.
sity arcs. J Appl Phys 1980;51:3149–57. [81] Ye G, Burström E, Kuhn M, Piret J. Reduction of steel-making slags for recov-
[47] Mostaghimi J, Boulos MI. Thermal plasma sources: how well are they adopted ery of valuable metals and oxide materials. Scand J Metall 2003;32:7–14.
to process needs? Plasma Chem Plasma Process 2015;35:421–36. [82] Ramachandran K, Kikukawa N. Thermal plasma in-flight treatment of electro-
[48] Hrabovsky M, Van der Walt IJ. Plasma waste destruction. In: Kulacki FA, edi- plating sludge. IEEE Trans Plasma Sci 2002;30:310–17.
tor. Handbook of thermal science and engineering. Cham: Springer International [83] Kos B. Technology for the recovery of aluminum from dross. Metall
Publishing; 2017. p. 1–57. 1994;48:972–4.
[49] Nishikawa H, Ibe M, Tanaka M, Ushio M, Takemoto T, Tanaka K, Tanahashi N, [84] NeuSchütz D. Plasma processing of dusts and residues. Pure Appl Chem
Ito T. A treatment of carbonaceous wastes using thermal plasma with steam. 1996;68:1159–65.
Vaccuum 2004;73:589–93. [85] Schlienger MP. Apparatus and method for high temperature disposal of haz-
[50] Rutberg PG. Some plasma environmental technologies developed in Russia. ardous waste materials. Google Patents; 1988.
Plasma Sources Sci Technol 2002;11:A159. [86] Chapman C, Williams J, Heanley C, Iddles D, Forde A, Risdon G. Development
[51] Tang L, Huang H, Hao H, Zhao K. Development of plasma pyroly- of a plasma reactor for the treatment of incinerator ashes. Atlanta, GA (United
sis/gasification systems for energy efficient and environmentally sound waste States): Georgia Institute of Technology; 1995.
disposal. J Electrostat 2013;71:839–47. [87] Eschenbach R. Use of plasma torches for melting special metals and for de-
[52] Heberlein J. Generation of thermal and pseudo-thermal plasmas. Pure Appl stroying and stabilizing hazardous wastes. In: Proceedings of the workshop
Chem 1992;64:629–36. industrial plasma applications, (Pugnochiuso, Italy); 1989.
[53] Jenista J, Heberlein J, Pfender E. Model for anode heat transfer from an elec- [88] Deegan DE, Chapman CD, Bowen C. The production of shaped glass-ceramic
tric arc. In: Proceedings of the 4th international thermal plasma processes con- materials from inorganic waste precursors using controlled atmospheric DC
ference. Begell House Inc; 1997. p. 805–15. plasma vitrification and crystallisation. High Temp Mater P US 2003;7:367–72.
[54] Sanders N, Pfender E. Measurement of anode falls and anode heat transfer in [89] Bendix D, Hebecker D. Energy recovery from waste and plasma conversion.
atmospheric pressure high intensity arcs. J Appl Phys 1984;55:714–22. High Temp Mater P US 2003;7.
[55] Pfender E, Lee Y. Particle dynamics and particle heat and mass transfer in [90] Ruj B, Ghosh S. Technological aspects for thermal plasma treatment of mu-
thermal plasmas. Part I. The motion of a single particle without thermal ef- nicipal solid waste-a review. Fuel Process Technol 2014;126:298–308.
fects. Plasma Chem Plasma Process 1985;5:211–37. [91] Hrabovsky M, Hlina M, Kopecky V, Maslani A, Zivny O, Krenek P, Serov A,
[56] Pfender E. Particle behavior in thermal plasmas. Plasma Chem Plasma Process Hurba O. Steam plasma treatment of organic substances for hydrogen and
1989;9 167S–194S. syngas production. Plasma Chem Plasma Process 2017;37:739–62.
[57] Rutberg PG. Plasma pyrolysis of toxic waste. Plasma Phys Control Fusion [92] Hrabovsky M, Kopeckykopecky V, Sember V, Kavka T, Chumak O, Konrad M.
2003;45:957. Properties of hybrid water/gas DC arc plasma torch. IEEE Trans Plasma Sci
[58] Trelles JP, Pfender E, Heberlein J. Multiscale finite element modeling of 2006;34:1566–75.
arc dynamics in a DC plasma torch. Plasma Chem Plasma Process [93] Hrabovsky M, Hlina M, Konrad M, Kopecky V, Kavka T, Chumak O, Maslani A.
2006;26:557–75. Thermal plasma gasification of biomass for fuel gas production. High Temp
[59] Hrabovský M. Generation of thermal plasmas in liquid-stabilized and hybrid Mater P US 2009;13:299–313.
dc-arc torches. J Pure Appl Chem 2002;74:429–33. [94] Van Oost G, Hrabovsky M, Kopecky V, Konrad M, Hlina M, Kavka T. Py-
[60] Watanabe T, Shimbara S. Halogenated hydrocarbon decomposition by steam rolysis/gasification of biomass for synthetic fuel production using a hybrid
thermal plasmas. High Temp Mater P US 2003;7. gas-water stabilized plasma torch. Vacuum 2008;83:209–12.
[61] Kawajiri K, Sato T, Nishiyama H. Experimental analysis of a DC-RF hybrid [95] City of Honolulu. Review of plasma arc gasification and vitrification technology
plasma flow. J Surf Coat Tech 2003;171:134–9. for waste disposal. Municipality of Honululu; 2003. Final Report.
[62] Sekiguchi H, Orimo T. Gasification of polyethylene using steam plasma gen- [96] Vaidyanathan A, Mulholland J, Ryu J, Smith MS, Circeo J, Louis J. Characteri-
erated by microwave discharge. Thin Solid Films 2004;457:44–7. zation of fuel gas products from the treatment of solid waste streams with a
[63] Goldston RJ, Rutherford PH. Introduction to plasma physics. CRC Press; 1995. plasma arc torch. J Environ Manag 2007;82:77–82.
[64] Hazra A, Das S, Ganguly A, Das P, Chatterjee PK, Murmu NC, et al.. Plasma [97] Tang L, Huang H, Zhao Z, Wu C, Chen Y. Pyrolysis of polypropylene in a ni-
arc technology: a potential solution toward waste to energy conversion and trogen plasma reactor. Ind Eng Chem Res 2003;42:1145–50.
of GHGs mitigation. Singapore: Springer Singapore; 2019. p. 203–17. [98] Zhao Z, Huang H, Wu C, Li H, Chen Y. Biomass pyrolysis in an argon/hydrogen
[65] Fiedler J, Lietz E, Bendix D, Hebecker D. Experimental and numerical inves- plasma reactor. Eng Life Sci 2001;1:197–9.
tigations of a plasma reactor for the thermal destruction of medical waste [99] Tsukada M, Goto K, Yamamoto RH, Horio M. Metal powder granulation in a
using a model substance. J Phys D Appl Phys 2004;37:1031. plasma-spouted/fluidized bed. Powder Technol 1995;82:347–53.
32 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873

[100] Kojima T, Matsukata M, Arao M, Nakamura M, Mitsuyoshi Y. Development of [133] Wang Q, Yan J, Tu X, Chi Y, Li X, Lu S, Cen K. Thermal treatment of munic-
a plasma jetting fluidized bed reactor. J Phys IV 1991;2 C2-429-C2-36. ipal solid waste incinerator fly ash using DC double arc argon plasma. Fuel
[101] Munz R, Mersereau O. A plasma spout-fluid bed for the recovery of vanadium 2009;88:955–8.
from vanadium ore. Chem Eng Sci 1990;45:2489–95. [134] Karoly Z, Mohai I, Toth M, Wéber F, Szépvölgyi J. Production of glass–ceram-
[102] Shie JL, Chen LX, Lin KL, Chang CY. Plasmatron gasification of biomass ics from fly ash using arc plasma. J Eur Ceramic Soc 2007;27:1721–5.
lignocellulosic waste materials derived from municipal solid waste. Energy [135] Haugsten KE, Gustavson B. Environmental properties of vitrified fly ash from
2014;66:82–9. hazardous and municipal waste incineration. Waste Manag 20 0 0;20:167–76.
[103] Shie JL, Tsou FJ, Lin KL, Chang CY. Bioenergy and products from thermal py- [136] Frugier P, Girold C, Megy S, Vandensteendam C, Ershov-Pavlov E, Baronnet JM.
rolysis of rice straw using plasma torch. Bioresour Technol 2010;101:761–8. OES use and vaporization modeling for fly-ash plasma vitrification. Plasma
[104] Tang L, Huang H. Decomposition of polyethylene in radio-frequency nitro- Chem Plasma Process 20 0 0;20:65–86.
gen and water steam plasmas under reduced pressures. Fuel Process Technol [137] Jakob A, Stucki S, Struis R, Paul WJ. Complete heavy metal removal from fly
2007;88:549–56. ash by heat treatment: influence of chlorides on evaporation rates. Environ
[105] Tu WK, Shie JL, Chang CY, Chang CF, Lin CF, Yang SY, Kuo JT, Shaw DG, Sci Technol 1996;30:3275–83.
You YD, Lee DJ. Products and bioenergy from the pyrolysis of rice [138] Sakai S, Hiraoka M. Municipal solid waste incinerator residue recycling by
straw via radio frequency plasma and its kinetics. Bioresource Technol thermal processes. Waste Manag 20 0 0;20:249–58.
20 09;10 0:2052–61. [139] Ecke H, Sakanakura H, Matsuto T, Tanaka N, Lagerkvist A. State-of-the-art
[106] Tu WK, Shie JL, Chang CY, Chang CF, Lin CF, Yang SY, Kuo JT, Shaw DG, treatment processes for municipal solid waste incineration residues in Japan.
Lee DJ. Pyrolysis of rice straw using radio-frequency plasma. Energy Fuels Waste Manage Res 20 0 0;18:41–51.
2007;22:24–30. [140] Kourti I, Rani DA, Deegan D, Boccaccini A, Cheeseman C. Production of
[107] Guddeti R, Knight R, Grossmann E. Depolymerization of polyethylene us- geopolymers using glass produced from DC plasma treatment of air pollution
ing induction-coupled plasma technology. Plasma Chem Plasma Process control (APC) residues. J Hazar Mater 2010;176:704–9.
20 0 0;20:37–64. [141] Polettini A, Pomi R, Sirini P. Vitrification and sintering for MSWI fly ash iner-
[108] Guddeti RR, Knight R, Grossmann ED. Depolymerization of polypropylene tization as alternatives to conventional stabilization treatments. In: Proceed-
in an induction-coupled plasma (ICP) reactor. Ind Eng Chem Res ings of international conference on solid waste technology management; 1999.
20 0 0;39:1171–6. p. 334–41.
[109] Motallebi C, Pernin J, Amouroux J. Catalytic hydrocracking of heavy hydrocar- [142] Shibuya E, Suguro Y, Akashi T, Nakao T, Hiraoka H, Nakahara K. Vitrifica-
bons in fluidized bed plasma. Recent Prog Genie Procedes 1991;5:169–74. tion for fly ash using electric-resistance furnace. NKK Technical Review; 20 0 0.
[110] Lin KC, Lin Y-C, Hsiao Y-H. Microwave plasma studies of Spirulina algae py- p. 1–7. Final Report.
rolysis with relevance to hydrogen production. Energy 2014;64:567–74. [143] Xiao Y, Harskamp R, Yang Y. Pre-washing and vitrification of fly ash from a
[111] Yoon SJ, Yun YM, Seo MW, Kim YK, Ra HW, Lee J-G. Hydrogen and syngas municipal solid waste incinerator. In: Proceedings of the global symposium on
production from glycerol through microwave plasma gasification. Int J Hydro- recycling, waste treatment and clean technology. REWAS; 2008. p. 1521–31.
gen Energy 2013;38:14559–67. [144] Xiao Y, Oorsprong M, Yang Y, Voncken J. Vitrification of bottom ash from a
[112] Hrycak B, Czylkowski D, Miotk R, Dors M, Jasinski M, Mizeraczyk J. Applica- municipal solid waste incinerator. Waste Manag 2008;28:1020–6.
tion of atmospheric pressure microwave plasma source for hydrogen produc- [145] Sobiecka E, Kołaciński Z, Rincón JM, Szymański Ł, Olejnik TP. Coloured
tion from ethanol. Int J Hydrogen Energy 2014;39:14184–90. sintered glass-ceramics from hospital incineration fly ash. Mater Lett
[113] Uhm HS, Na YH, Hong YC, Shin DH, Cho CH. Production of hydrogen-rich syn- 2019;252:35–7.
thetic gas from low-grade coals by microwave steam-plasmas. Int J Hydrogen [146] Ball R, Barry T, Gisby J. Phase diagrams for CaO-SiO2 . Phase Equilibria Dia-
Energy 2014;39:4351–5. grams Database; 1993.
[114] Shin DH, Hong YC, Lee SJ, Kim YJ, Cho CH, Ma SH, Chun SM, Lee BJ, Uhm HS. [147] Klein C, Dutrow B. Manual of mineral science. Wiley; 2007.
A pure steam microwave plasma torch: gasification of powdered coal in the [148] Sobiecka E, Szymanski L. Thermal plasma vitrification process as an effective
plasma. Surf Coat Tech 2013;228:S520–S5S3. technology for fly ash and chromium-rich sewage sludge utilization. J Chem
[115] Hlina M, Hrabovsky M, Kavka T, Konrad M. Production of high quality syn- Technol Biot 2014;89:1115–17.
gas from argon/water plasma gasification of biomass and waste. Waste Manag [149] Abdulkarim B, Abuhasan M, Ali A. Thermal plasma treatment of municipal
2014;34:63–6. solid waste incineration residue: a review. Asian J Eng Technol 2016;4:92–101.
[116] Wang M, Mao M, Zhang M, Wen G, Yang Q, Su B, Ren Q. Highly efficient [150] Blary F, Rollin M. Vitrification of asbestos wastes. Atlanta, GA (United States):
treatment of textile dyeing sludge by CO2 thermal plasma gasification. Waste Georgia Institute of Technology; 1995.
Manag 2019;90:29–36. [151] Carabin P, Gagnon J. Thermal destruction of waste using plasma. In: Proceed-
[117] Jamróz P, Kordylewski W, Wnukowski M. Microwave plasma application in ings of the biomass and waste to energy symposium, (Venice, Italy); 2006.
decomposition and steam reforming of model tar compounds. Fuel Process [152] Chronopoulos C, Chevalier P, Picard I, Kaldas A, Carabin P, Holcroft G,
Technol 2018;169:1–14. Swensen B. The plasma arc waste destruction system—one year of maritime
[118] Suzuki M, Ichihashi T, Jote A, Nishio S, Kawagoe S. Application of reac- experience. In: Proceedings of the 24th international conference on incinera-
tive plasma to nuclear waste treatment-Possibility of separation process of tion and thermal treatment technologies, (Galveston, TX, USA); 2005.
Zr-Nb alloy by reactive thermal plasma treatment. High Temp Mater P US [153] Kaldas A, Alexakis T, Tsantrizos P, Pelletier S. Optimization of the marine
2003;7. plasma waste destruction technology. In: Proceedings of the IT3 conference,
[119] Suzuki M, Kadowaki M, Windarto F, Mori S. Comparison of different types (Orlando, FL, USA); 2003.
of plasma in radioactive surface decontamination process. Materials Science [154] Jimbo H. Plasma melting and useful application of molten slag. Waste Manag
Forum; 2005. p. 321–6. 1996;16:417–22.
[120] Bittner D, Baumann H, Klein J. Relation between coal properties and acety- [155] Nishigaki M. Producing permeable blocks and pavement bricks from molten
lene yield in plasma pyrolysis. Fuel 1985;64:1370–4. slag. Waste Manag 20 0 0;20:185–92.
[121] Bittner D, Wanzl W. The significance of coal properties for acetylene forma- [156] Rawlings R, Wu J, Boccaccini A. Glass-ceramic foams from coal ash and waste
tion in a hydrogen plasma. Fuel Process Technol 1990;24:311–16. glass: production and characterization. J Mater Sci 2006;41:733–61.
[122] Bond R, Galbraith I, Ladner W, McConnell G. Production of acetylene from [157] Changming D, Chao S, Gong X, Ting W, Xiange W. Plasma methods for metals
coal, using a plasma jet. Nature 1963;200:1313. recovery from metal-containing waste. Waste Manag 2018;77:373–87.
[123] Nicholson R, Littlewood K. Plasma pyrolysis of coal. Nature 1972;236:397. [158] Hall WJ, Williams PT. Separation and recovery of materials from scrap printed
[124] Patrick A Jr, Gannon R. A 1MW prototype arc reactor for processing coal to circuit boards. Resour Conserv Recycl 2007;51:691–709.
chemicals. Radio Freq Rad Plasma Process Ind Appl Adv 1985:144–54. [159] Oishi T, Koyama K, Alam S, Tanaka M, Lee JC. Recovery of high purity cop-
[125] Georgiev IB, Mihailov BI. Some general conclusions from the results of studies per cathode from printed circuit boards using ammoniacal sulfate or chloride
on solid fuel steam plasma gasification. Fuel 1992;71:895–901. solutions. Hydrometallurgy 2007;89:82–8.
[126] Park HS, Kim CG, Kim SJ. Characteristics of PE gasification by steam plasma. J [160] Jones R, Curr T, Barcza N. Developments in plasma furnace technology, high-in-
Ind Eng Chem 2006;12:216–23. tensity pyrometallurgy. The Institution of Mining and Metallurgy; 1993.
[127] Van Oost G, Hrabovsky M, Kopecky V, Konrad M, Hlina M, Kavka T, Chu- [161] Drouet M, Meunier J, Laflamme C, Handfield M, Biscaro A, Lemire C. A rotary
mak A, Beeckman E, Verstraeten J. Pyrolysis of waste using a hybrid ar- arc furnace for aluminum dross processing. Atlanta, GA, (United States): Georgia
gon–water stabilized torch. Vacuum 2006;80:1132–7. Institute of Technology; 1995.
[128] Sekiguchi H, Mori Y. Steam plasma reforming using microwave discharge. [162] McPherson R, Shafer B. Spherulites and phase separation in plasma-dissoci-
Thin Solid Films 2003;435:44–8. ated zircon. J Mater Sci 1984;19:2696–704.
[129] Kamei O, Onoe K, Marushima W, Yamaguchi T. Brown coal conversion [163] Mitrasinovic A, Pershin L, Wen JZ, Mostaghimi J. Recovery of Cu and valuable
by microwave plasma reactions under successive supply of methane. Fuel metals from E-waste using thermal plasma treatment. JOM US 2011;63:24.
1998;77:1503–6. [164] Mohai I, Szépvölgyi J, Karoly Z, Mohai M, Toth M, Babievskaya I, Krenev V.
[130] Pan X, Yan J, Xie Z. Detoxifying PCDD/Fs and heavy metals in fly ash from Reduction of metallurgical wastes in an RF thermal plasma reactor. Plasma
medical waste incinerators with a DC double arc plasma torch. J Environ Sci Chem Plasma Process 2001;21:547–63.
2013;25:1362–7. [165] Wang SB, Cheng CM, Lan W, Zhang XH, Liu DP, Yang SZ. Experimental
[131] Kuo YM, Huang KL, Lin C. Metal behavior during vitrification of municipal study of thermal plasma processing waste circuit boards. Adv Mater Res
solid waste incinerator fly ash. Aerosol Air Qual Res 2012;12:1379–85. 2013:1553–61.
[132] Zhao P, Ni G, Jiang Y, Chen L, Chen M, Meng Y. Destruction of inorganic mu- [166] Elanski D, Lim JW, Mimura K, Isshiki M. Impurity removal from Fe, Cr, Ti, and
nicipal solid waste incinerator fly ash in a DC arc plasma furnace. J Hazard V metals by hydrogen plasma arc melting and thermodynamic estimation of
Mater 2010;181:580–5. hydride and sulfide formation. J Alloy Compd 2006;421:209–16.
 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873 33

[167] Li G, Li L, Li X, Tian W, Guo H. Effect of plasma arc melting technology on [199] Colombo V, Ghedini E, Mentrelli A, Malfa E. 3-D modeling of DC transferred
carbon concentration in Terbium. High Voltage 2015;41:2925–9. arc twin torch for asbestos inertization. In: Proceedings of the IEEE conference
[168] Mimura K, Lim JW, Oh JM, Choi GS, Cho SW, Uchikoshi M, Isshiki M. Refin- record-abstracts 2005 in IEEE international conference on plasma science. IEEE;
ing effect of hydrogen plasma arc melting on titanium sponges. Mater Lett 2005. p. 228.
2010;64:411–14. [200] Barthelemy B, Girold C, Delalondre C, Paya B, Baronnet J. Modeling a pilot-s-
[169] Leal Vieira Cubas A, de Medeiros Machado M, de Medeiros Machado M, cale combustion/vitrification furnace under oxygen plasma arc transferred
Gross F, Magnago RF, Moecke EHS, Goncalvez I. Inertization of heavy met- between twin torches. In: Proceedings of the 16th international symposium
als present in galvanic sludge by DC thermal plasma. Environ Sci Technol on plasma chemistry, (Taormina, Italy); 2003.
2014;48:2853–61. [201] Frugier P, Godon N, Vernaz E, Larché F. Influence of composition variations
[170] Tuan YJ, Wang HP, Chang JE. Tracking of chromium in plasma co-melting of on the initial alteration rate of vitrified domestic waste incineration fly-ash.
fly ashes and sludges. Water Air Soil Pollut 2012;223:5283–8. Waste Manag 2002;22:137–42.
[171] Watanabe T, Soyama M, Kanzawa A, Takeuchi A, Koike M. Reduction and sep- [202] Piepel G, Redgate T. Mixture experiment techniques for reducing the number
aration of silica-alumina mixture with argon-hydrogen thermal plasmas. Thin of components applied for modeling waste glass sodium release. J Am Ceram
Solid Films 1999;345:161–6. Soc 1997;80:3038–44.
[172] Yang HC, Kim JH. Characteristics of dioxins and metals emission from rad- [203] Besmann TM, Spear KE. Thermochemical modeling of oxide glasses. J Am Ce-
waste plasma arc melter system. Chemosphere 2004;57:421–8. ram Soc 2002;85:2887–94.
[173] Szałatkiewicz J. Metals recovery from artificial ore in case of printed circuit [204] Kim CW, Choi K, Park JK, Shin SW, Song MJ. Enthalpies of chromium
boards, using plasmatron plasma reactor. Materials 2016;9:683. oxide solution in soda lime borosilicate glass systems. J Am Ceram Soc
[174] Szałatkiewicz J, Szewczyk R, Budny E, Missala T, Winiarski W. Construction 2001;84:2987–90.
aspects of plasma based technology for waste of electrical and electronic [205] Lapa N, Oliveira JS, Camacho S, Circeo L. An ecotoxic risk assessment of
equipment (WEEE) management in urban areas. Procedia Eng 2013;57:1100–8. residue materials produced by the plasma pyrolysis/vitrification (PP/V) pro-
[175] Pavlik Jr RS, Holland HJ, Payzant EA. Thermal decomposition of zircon refrac- cess. Waste Manag 2002;22:335–42.
tories. J Am Ceram Soc 2001;84:2930–6. [206] Brothier M, Gramondi P, Poletiko C, Michon U, Labrot M, Hacala A. Bio-
[176] Da Cruz A. Universal plasma-arc fired rotary tiltable aluminum recycling fur- fuel and hydrogen production from biomass gasification by use of thermal
nace. In: Proceedings of the 17th international symposium plasma chem- plasma. High Temp Mater P US 2007;11.
istry-industrial workshop, (University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada); 2005. [207] Phoenix Solution Company. www.phoenixsolutionsco.com [accessed: 14 June
[177] Chapman C, Liddiard L, Deegan D. Clean plasma technology for the treatment 2019].
and utilization of iron and steel making wastes. In: Proceedings of China steel [208] Westing House Corporation. www.westinghouse-plasma.com [accessed: 14
conference, (Kaohsung, Taiwan); 2001. June 2019].
[178] John P. Plasma sciences and the creation of wealth. Tata McGraw-Hill Educa- [209] Europlasma. www.europlasma.com [accessed: 16 June 2019].
tion; 2005. [210] Willis KP, Osada S, Willerton KL. Plasma gasification: lessons learned at
[179] Chapman C, Cowx P. Tetronics process for the treatment of electric arc fur- Eco-Valley WTE facility. In: Proceedings of the 18th annual north American
nace dust. Steel Times 1991;219:301–4. waste-to-energy conference. American Society of Mechanical Engineers; 2010.
[180] Mac Rae DR, Cowx PM. Plasma furnace treatment of electric arc furnace dust p. 133–40.
as demonstrated by Bethlehem-tetronics. Center for Metals Production, Mellon [211] Morrin S, Lettieri P, Chapman C, Mazzei L. Two stage fluid bed-plasma
Institute; 1988. gasification process for solid waste valorisation: Technical review and pre-
[181] Abbas HF, Daud WW. Hydrogen production by methane decomposition: a re- liminary thermodynamic modelling of sulphur emissions. Waste Manag
view. Int J Hydrogen Energy 2010;35:1160–90. 2012;32:676–84.
[182] Zhang X, Li H, Cao Q, Jin Le, Wang F. Upgrading pyrolytic residue from waste [212] Tetronics. www.tetronics.com [accessed: 22 June 2019].
tires to commercial carbon black. Waste Manag Res 2018;36:436–44. [213] Advanced Plasma Power. www.advancedplasmapower.com [accessed: 16 June
[183] Guo XF, Kim GJ. Synthesis of ultrafine carbon black by pyrolysis of polymers 2019].
using a direct current thermal plasma process. Plasma Chem Plasma Process [214] Alternrg Corporation. www.alternrg.com [accessed: 26 June 2019].
2010;30:75–90. [215] CHO Power. www.cho-power.com [accessed: 22 June 2019].
[184] Basu P. Biomass gasification, pyrolysis and torrefaction: practical design and the- [216] Enersol Inc. www.enersoltech.com [accessed: 15 June 2019].
ory. Academic Press; 2018. [217] Inentec Inc. www.inentec.com [accessed: 26 June 2019].
[185] Sikarwar VS, Ji G, Zhao M, Wang Y. Equilibrium modeling of sorp- [218] PAT Inc. www.plasmaarchtech.com [accessed: 27 June 2019].
tion-enhanced cogasification of sewage sludge and wood for hydrogen-rich [219] Pyrogenesis Inc. www.pyrogenesis.com. [accessed: 27 June 2019].
gas production with in situ carbon dioxide capture. Ind Eng Chem Res [220] Plasco Energy Group Inc. www.plascoenergygroup.com [accessed: 20 June
2017;56:5993–6001. 2019].
[186] De Souza-Santos ML. Solid fuels combustion and gasification: modeling, simula- [221] PEAT International. www.peat.com [accessed: 22 June 2019].
tion. CRC Press; 2010. [222] BGT Ltd. www.bgt-online.com [accessed: 30 June 2019].
[187] Minutillo M, Perna A, Di Bona D. Modelling and performance analysis of an [223] The Plasma Solution System. www.theplasmasolution.com [accessed: 8 June
integrated plasma gasification combined cycle (IPGCC) power plant. Energy 2019].
Convers Manag 2009;50:2837–42. [224] Green Power Systems. www.green-powersystems.com [accessed: 22 June
[188] Galeno G, Minutillo M, Perna A. From waste to electricity through inte- 2019].
grated plasma gasification/fuel cell (IPGFC) system. Int J Hydrogen Energy [225] Van Oost G, Hrabovsky M, Khvedchyn I, Sauchyn V, Shvarkov D. Destruc-
2011;36:1692–701. tion of toxic organic compounds in a plasmachemical reactor. Vacuum
[189] Materazzi M, Lettieri P, Mazzei L, Taylor R, Chapman C. Thermodynamic mod- 2013;88:165–8.
elling and evaluation of a two-stage thermal process for waste gasification. [226] Young GC. Municipal solid waste to energy conversion processes: economic, tech-
Fuel 2013;108:356–69. nical, and renewable comparisons. John Wiley & Sons; 2010.
[190] Taylor R, Ray R, Chapman C. Advanced thermal treatment of auto shredder [227] De Greef J, Villani K, Goethals J, Van Belle H, Van Caneghem J, Vandecas-
residue and refuse derived fuel. Fuel 2013;106:401–9. teele C. Optimising energy recovery and use of chemicals, resources and ma-
[191] Ray R, Taylor R, Chapman C. The deployment of an advanced gasification terials in modern waste-to-energy plants. Waste Manag 2013;33:2416–24.
technology in the treatment of household and other waste streams. Process [228] Lee S-H, Themelis NJ, Castaldi MJ. High-temperature corrosion in waste–
Saf Environ 2012;90:213–20. to-energy boilers. J Therm Spray Technol 2007;16:104–10.
[192] Lombardi L, Carnevale E, Corti A. Analysis of energy recovery potential using [229] Persson K, Broström M, Carlsson J, Nordin A, Backman R. High temper-
innovative technologies of waste gasification. Waste Manag 2012;32:640–52. ature corrosion in a 65 MW waste to energy plant. Fuel Process Technol
[193] Mountouris A, Voutsas E, Tassios D. Solid waste plasma gasification: Equi- 2007;88:1178–82.
librium model development and exergy analysis. Energy Convers Manag [230] Lombardi L, Carnevale E, Corti A. A review of technologies and performances
2006;47:1723–37. of thermal treatment systems for energy recovery from waste. Waste Manag
[194] Agon N, Hrabovský M, Chumak O, Hlína M, Kopecký V, Masl̆áni A, Bosmans A, 2015;37:26–44.
Helsen L, Skoblja S, Van Oost G, Vierendeels J. Plasma gasification of refuse [231] Pavlas M, Touš M, Klimek P, Bébar L. Waste incineration with production of
derived fuel in a single-stage system using different gasifying agents. Waste clean and reliable energy. Clean Technol Environ 2011;13:595–605.
Manag 2016;47:246–55. [232] Bolhar-Nordenkampf M, Isaksson J. Operating experiences of large scale CFB–
[195] Messerle VE, Mosse AL, Ustimenko AB. Municipal solid waste plasma pro- gasification plants for the substitution of fossil fuels. In: Proceedings of the
cessing: thermodynamic computation and experiment. IEEE Trans Plasma Sci 24th European biomass conference, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; 2016.
2016;44:3017–22. [233] Tees Valley Renewable Energy Facilities. http://www.airproducts.co.uk/
[196] Huang X, Cheng D, Chen F, Zhan X. Reaction pathways of hemicellulose and microsite/uk/teesvalley/. Accessed: [5 October 2018].
mechanism of biomass pyrolysis in hydrogen plasma: a density functional [234] Alternrg IPGCC Facility. http://www.alternrg.com/waste_to_energy/typical_
theory study. Renew Energy 2016;96:490–7. plasma_facility/ [accessed: 13 November 2018].
[197] Hanus G, Springer M. Plasma thermal destruction and recovery treatment [235] Ducharme C. Technical and economic analysis of plasma-assisted waste-to-en-
of PCB-contaminated liquids and solids. In: Proceedings of the international ergy processes (MS Thesis). Columbia University; 2010.
conference on incineration and thermal treatment technologies, (Phoenix, AZ, [236] Xin-gang Z, Gui-wu J, Ang L, Yun L. Technology, cost, a performance of
USA); 2007. waste-to-energy incineration industry in China. Renew Sustain Energy Rev
[198] Murphy A, McAllister T. Modeling of the physics and chemistry of thermal 2016;55:115–30.
plasma waste destruction. Phys Plasmas 2001;8:2565–71.
34 V.S. Sikarwar, M. Hrabovský and G. Van Oost et al. / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 81 (2020) 100873

[237] Zhao X, Jiang G, Li A, Wang L. Economic analysis of waste-to-energy industry has been the head of research of thermal plasma gasification of various kinds of
in China. Waste Manag 2016;48:604–18. organic materials and plasma aided reforming of methane and other gaseous and
[238] Huang H, Tang L. Treatment of organic waste using thermal plasma pyrolysis liquid hydrocarbons. He is an author of more than 300 publications in journals,
technology. Energy Convers Manag 2007;48:1331–7. books and proceedings of conferences, and 7 patents. He is a member of the Edi-
[239] Arngrim N, Schytz HW, Britze J, Vestergaard MB, Sander M, Olsen KS, Ole- torial Board of Plasma Chemistry and Plasma Processing, a Fellow of International
sen J, Ashina M. Carbon monoxide inhalation induces headache in a human Plasma Chemistry Society, and a Fellow of Engineering Academy of the Czech Re-
headache model. Cephalalgia 2018;38:697–706. public.
[240] Choi Y, Park K, Kim I, Kim S. Combined toxic effect of airborne heavy metals
on human lung cell line A549. Environ Geochem Health 2018;40:271–82. Guido Van Oost is an Emeritus Professor of Nuclear Fu-
[241] Deng Q, Deng L, Miao Y, Guo X, Li Y. Particle deposition in the human lung: sion at Ghent University (Belgium). He is the founder
Health implications of particulate matter from different sources. Environ Res of the EU Erasmus Mundus “European Master in Nu-
2019;169:237–45. clear Fusion and Engineering Physics” and of the Erasmus
[242] Ferreira IM, Pinho O, Petisca C. Potential effects of furan and related com- Mundus “International Doctoral College in Fusion Science
pounds on health. Coffee 2019:520–40. and Engineering”. He is a Professor at the National Re-
[243] Guleria R, Mathur V, Dhanuka A. Health effects of changing environment. search Nuclear University “MEPhI” (Moscow, Russia) and
In: Natural resource management: ecological perspectives. Springer; 2019. at the National Research University “Moscow Power En-
p. 95–107. gineering Institute” (Moscow, Russia). He is also an Hon-
[244] Lombardo JP, Peck JA. Effects of exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls dur- orary Professor of the Peter the Great St. Petersburg Poly-
ing different periods of development on ethanol consumption by male and technic University. He was decorated with Silver Com-
female rats. Environ Pollut 2018;236:334–42. memorative Medal of Charles University in Prague, Ernst
[245] Mollah MYA, Schennach R, Patscheider J, Promreuk S, Cocke DL. Plasma Mach Honorary Medal for Merit in the Physical Sciences
chemistry as a tool for green chemistry, environmental analysis and waste (Czech Academy of Sciences), and a Medal of the Czech Technical University in
management. J Hazard Mater 20 0 0;79:301–20. Prague for outstanding contributions to the development of the Faculty of Nuclear
[246] Smith MR, Myers S. Impact of anthropogenic CO2 emissions on global human Sciences and Physical Engineering. He has more than 650 publications in the fields
nutrition. Nat Clim Change 2018;8:834. of controlled magnetic fusion in the framework of the EU fusion programme as well
[247] Strapáčová S, Brenerová P, Krčmář P, Andersson P, van Ede KI, van Du- as in the field of plasma treatment of waste (in collaboration with the Institute of
ursen MB, Van den Berg M, Vondracek J, Machala M. Relative effective poten- Plasma Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences).
cies of dioxin-like compounds in rodent and human lung cell models. Toxicol-
ogy 2018;404:33–41. Michael Pohořelý is an Associate Professor at the Depart-
[248] Herva M, Roca E. Ranking municipal solid waste treatment alternatives based ment of Power Engineering, University of Chemistry and
on ecological footprint and multi-criteria analysis. Ecol Indic 2013;25:77–84. Technology (UCT), Prague and a Scientist at the Institute
[249] Ramos A, Teixeira CA, Rouboa A. Environmental assessment of municipal solid of Chemical Process Fundamentals of the Czech Academy
waste by two-stage plasma gasification. Energies 2019;12:137. of Sciences, Prague. His research is focused on biomass
[250] Tagliaferri C, Evangelisti S, Clift R, Lettieri P, Chapman C, Taylor R. Life cy- and waste gasification and pyrolysis, material and en-
cle assessment of conventional and advanced two-stage energy-from-waste ergy utilization of stabilized sewage sludge, gas cleaning
technologies for methane production. J Clean Prod 2016;129:144–58. systems, fluidized bed processes, analytics of solid fuels
[251] Evangelisti S, Tagliaferri C, Clift R, Lettieri P, Taylor R, Chapman C. Life cycle and waste, and on the technologies for the production of
assessment of conventional and two-stage advanced energy-from-waste tech- biochar. He is the head of the Czech Pyrolysis and Gasi-
nologies for municipal solid waste treatment. J Clean Prod 2015;100:212–23. fication Association. He has published more than 70 re-
[252] Mustoe TN, Liang FW. The power of plasma: commercialization and the envi- search papers.
ronment. In: Proceedings of the international conference on incineration and
thermal treatment technologies, Olando, FL, USA; 1999. Michal Jeremias is a scientist and the head of the De-
[253] Kalogirou EN. Waste-to-Energy technologies and global applications. Boca Ra- partment of Plasma Chemical Technologies at the Insti-
ton: CRC Press; 2017. tute of Plasma Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences
[254] Galaly AR, Guido V. Environmental and economic vision of plasma treatment (CAS). He received his doctoral and master degrees from
of waste in Makkah. Plasma Sci Technol 2017;19:105503. the Department of Power Engineering of the University
[255] Ramos A, Berzosa J, Espí J, Clarens F, Rouboa A. Life cycle costing for plasma of Chemistry and Technology in Prague (UCT). During his
gasification of municipal solid waste: a socio-economic approach. Energy Con- master and doctoral studies, he was also employed at the
vers Manag 2020;209:112508. Institute of Chemical Process Fundamentals of CAS, where
he worked on the oxyfuel gasification of coal, biomass
Vineet Singh Sikarwar is a joint researcher at the Divi- and wastes in fluidized bed in the framework of several
sion of Plasma Chemical Technologies, Czech Academy of international projects. He gained his postdoctoral experi-
Sciences, Prague, the Department of Power Engineering, ence at Cranfield University (UK) where he worked on a
University of Chemistry and Technology, Prague and the series of combustion and gasification projects, and in par-
Department of Green Chemistry and Technology, Ghent ticular on Ca looping project where he designed, developed and commissioned a
University, Ghent. He is working on the experimental and 25 kW pilot plant. His current research at the Institute of Plasma Physics CAS fo-
theoretical investigations of thermal plasma waste treat- cuses on the utilization of plastic waste via thermal plasma pyrolysis to produce
ment with the recovery of energy, and value added mate- carbon black and hydrogen with the consumption of off-peak renewable electric-
rials. He has published papers in journals such as Energy ity. He acts as a delegate of the Czech Republic to the Programme Committee of
and Environmental Science, Progress in Energy and Com- Horizon 2020.
bustion Science among others. He has pursued his Bach-
elor and Master studies at Rajiv Gandhi Technical Uni-
versity India, in Mechanical Engineering, with projects on
Renewable Energy Systems.

Milan Hrabovsky is a Senior Scientist in the Depart-

ment of Plasma Chemical Technologies of the Institute of
Plasma Physics (IPP), Academy of Sciences of the Czech
Republic. In the past, he has worked for 27 years as the
Head of the Department of Thermal Plasma at IPP. His
main research areas are thermal plasma physics and tech-
nology, electrical discharges, arc physics and arc plasma
torches. He is specialized in the research of gas and wa-
ter stabilized DC arc plasma torches, physics of thermal
plasma jets, and fundamentals of plasma processing. He
was a leader in the development of world unique plasma
torch system WSP®H with hybrid water/gas arc stabiliza-
tion, which is since been utilized in plasma spraying tech-
nology and for plasma gasification of waste organics, worldwide. In recent years, he