The plasma-chemical installation developed by Rusnano, which is capable of destroying hazardous waste down to its molecules, and the head of Rosprirodnadzor Svetlana Radionova reported to Vladimir Putin about the successful testing of it the day before, is not something new – Japan has been using similar technologies for a long time, and a similar installation was presented in Russia back in 2009–2011. In Belarus, at the Institute of Heat and Mass Transfer, similar technologies were proposed back in the mid-2000s by Alfred Mosse, with whom Vitaly Zhdank, CTO of the ARRT project at that time, established quite fruitful cooperation, which, unfortunately, has not yet been continued.
Let us remind you that the problem of more complete waste disposal, which our project is intended to solve, is well known. Although in this case we are talking about the destruction of organic waste (this is far from all types of waste and harmful substances, of course) by high-temperature (plasma) decomposition or combustion. The world has been doing this for a long time. In Japan, for example, high-temperature waste processing plants have been operating effectively for a long time – for example, the Maishima plant in Osaka. Moreover, production there is economically profitable. According to Vitaly Zhdanok, complete combustion or decomposition of household organic substances of irregular composition is not easy to achieve: some aerosols are always formed – it is important how many there are and what size the particles are. “But decomposition into molecules itself is not everything. It is important that these molecules are not hazardous to human health. During plasma treatment, in particular, carbon monoxide is formed, which must be carefully burned or processed into the chemical industry.” , explained the engineer-scientist and developer.
At the same time, Vitaly Zhdanok noted that the main sources of pollution of our planet are now countries such as China and India, “where they are not particularly concerned about such problems.” Russian landfills mainly use “primitive installations” – iron barrels with pipes, fireboxes filled with coal and a ash pit. “In fact, such installations did not reach the required high temperatures for the complete decomposition of hazardous substances, which had a negative impact on the environment,” noted Vitaly Zhdanok. As a “sad example,” he cited a landfill in the Miskhor region in Crimea, where in the 2000s there was a two-hundred-liter barrel with a two-meter pipe – “high-tech equipment for the destruction of hazardous waste.”
Today’s installations at waste incineration plants operate at relatively low temperatures – 800–1000 ° C and are not capable of ensuring complete combustion of waste. That is, a significant amount of harmful substances is released into the atmosphere, including aggressive dust particles and ash. A plasma generator for burning waste, capable of creating a reactor working area with temperatures from 1200 to 2000 ° C, was developed at the Institute of Electrophysics and Electric Power Engineering of the Russian Academy of Sciences “at least in the beginning of 2009–2011.” And research itself on electroplasma technologies for burning municipal solid waste has been conducted in Russia since the early 1960s. “However, the operation of a plasma torch means a high noise level (up to 120–130 dB) and always very stringent requirements for the organization of labor safety and always high energy consumption. Always. In a simplified way, we can imagine an aircraft jet engine in which various types of waste are burned. Then There is a plasma installation, built in the 1990s at the Kurchatov Institute, which worked quite successfully when burning chemical weapons, but the cost of burning solid waste when operating such an installation is prohibitive. And neither our scientists, pioneers in this field, nor those who used them crossed this cost barrier achievements of colleagues from France, South Korea, Canada and Israel,” added Vitaly Zhdanok.
The company announced that Rusnano and Rosprirodnadzor are working to create a new waste disposal system in September 2022. The purpose of the development, in addition to the direct disposal of hazardous waste, was also the purification of wastewater from wastewater disposal systems and the reclamation of solid municipal waste landfills. Against the background of these developments, the ARRT project (https://arrt.pro) stands out for the better due to its more complete processing of secondary waste and much lower emissions from emissions of harmful substances, while making it possible to simultaneously obtain electricity and nanomaterials. Participation in the ARRT project as an investor and partner is your real chance to take care of the future.
