Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 22, 1995 TAG: 9504240053
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The process could transform much of the nation's garbage and poisonous wastes into paving material, the researchers claimed at a meeting of physicists.
Artificial lightning bolts arcing across a nitrogen-filled furnace chamber create a superheated plasma that ``will melt just about anything'' and neutralize molecules of highly toxic chemicals, David R. Cohn, a researcher at the plasma physics laboratory at MIT, said Friday.
Cohn, speaking at the national meeting of the American Physical Society, said the electrical charge in the powerful heat of the furnace ``is like a sledgehammer that can take virtually any material and turn it into a neutral substance. It is like a continuous bolt of lightning.''
Toxic chemicals, such as solvents, ``are blown apart by the high temperatures, and the atoms recombine into simpler and less toxic and more manageable molecules,'' he said.
Gas waste from the process is about one-tenth of that from conventional incinerators, he said.
Because the process occurs in a nitrogen-filled furnace and in the absence of oxygen, Cohn said, the plasma furnace does not create new toxic chemicals, such as dioxins, as do some current techniques of waste processing.
Also, he said, the plasma machine does not create toxic ash, a problem with most conventional incinerators. Instead, the MIT process reduces the wastes into a lava-like glass that is benign and chemically neutral.
Memo: ***CORRECTION***