Plasma Gasification

Addressing the contemporary waste management is seeing a shift towards energy production while managing waste sustainably. Consequently, waste treatment through gasification is slowly taking over the waste incineration with multiple benefits, including simultaneous waste management and energy production while reducing landfill volumes and displacing conventional fossil fuels. Only in the UK, there are around 14 commercial plants built to operate on gasification technology. These include fixed bed and fluidized bed gasification reactors. Ultra-clean tar free gasification of waste is now the best available technique and has experienced a significant shift from two-stage gasification and combustion towards a one-stage system for gasification and syngas cleaning. Nowadays in gasification sector, more companies are developing commercial plants with tar cracking and syngas cleaning. Moreover, gasification can be a practical scheme when applying ultra-clean syngas for a gas turbine with heat recovery by steam cycle for district heating and cooling (DHC) systems. This chapter aims to examine the recent trends in gasification-based waste-to-energy technologies. Furthermore, types of gasification technologies, their challenges and future perspectives in various applications are highlighted in detail.