October 20, 2015 • 35 mins
There is a way to not only sustainably get rid our household waste, but also produce enough energy from it to power the process and even create electricity for the grid. The future is here!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey you welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, guest producer. Noel is here.
Noel's moved in. Yeah, so what that that cod is
(00:22):
on the plan? He works constantly. Uh. You know what
my superhero nickname was as a child. Uh, I'll tell
you plasma Boy. No, it wasn't. I'm just kidding. That
was a weird joke. Why we're talking about plasma Plasma boy? Yeah,
(00:44):
like a radioactive man na plasma boy. Yeah, but it
wasn't plasma boy. It was what was it? What was
the Sidekicks name? Radioactive Man Sidekicks? Uh? Now I want
to know, dude. Well, that's a band, I know, but
(01:06):
I wonder if it's based on that maybe. I don't know.
We'll find out, won't we. Well, we'll look it up
and then we'll find out with a million emails. So, um,
plasma boy. Huh. I wish you must have an affinity
for this episode. Then it's great, Chuck. You know, when
lightning strikes the earth, we did a pretty awesome podcast
(01:28):
on lightning. Do you remember we talked about how it
literally rips the sky open. It rips the atmosphere open,
and as it's traveling down through this ripped open atmosphere,
the air on either side of this stuff is superheated
to about twenty thousand degrees. It's more than three times
the surface temperature of the sun celsius. I should say celsius,
(01:53):
not even fair enhog. It's about twelve grand celsius. Roughly,
it's super hot, right, I'm sorry. Fare Kneite does a
fare kneit. Yeah, twelve grand fare kneit. Yeah, Okay. At
any rate degrees is lightning. And this when the air
is superheated, it takes on what's commonly called the fourth
state of matter, plasma. Right, so you've got solid, boring
(02:19):
liquid gas. Awesome, Okay, but plasma is super awesome gas.
It's it's a bit like a gas, and usually it
starts out as a gas, but it it holds an
electro magnetic field, or creates an electromagnetic field, and it
holds an electrical charge. It has free roaming electrons. It's
(02:41):
running through it doing all sorts of crazy stuff. It
just basically breaks gas into like this, this crazy, weird
different type of fluid and that's plasma and it's awesome
ionized gas. Yes, pretty good stuff. Uh, super high tempts,
like you are saying. And because it's a super high attempt,
(03:03):
what it can do is it it can break down,
it can it can it can cause something solid to
undergo what's called molecular dissociation, which means it's not just
burning something, it's not melting something. It's actually exposing it
to so much heat that the molecular bonds break apart
(03:23):
and it becomes a pile of its components and it
breaks it down to from its compound of molecules to
its atomic components. Yeah, pretty amazing. It is very amazing. UM.
And it's like you said, it's not it's not UM
burning Like this process of UM using a plasma torch
(03:47):
to break something down to decompose it is actually what
it's doing. UM doesn't even need to use oxygen nope. UM.
So that means that it's a process called pyrolysis, which
is intense, intense heat that creates decomposition in some sort
of matter, especially organic matter, and UM. As a result,
(04:07):
you get these byproducts. If it's a an organic piece
of materials, say like some corn stalks that are using
a biomass feedstock. Um, it will become something called sin gas. Right.
And then if it's something like um old pair of
roller skates, yeah, we'll save those. First of all, they're
(04:32):
just not very good any longer. So the leather is
was it at one point organic? I guess it would
still be considered an organic material that turns into gas.
The metal in the skates that will turn into something
called slag, right, and it undergoes the process of vitrification, Yeah,
(04:53):
it does. Vitrification is where this stuff becomes so the
bombs break between it so thoroughly that it becomes basically
a form of glass, yeah, like volcanic glass, almost at
least what it looks like, Yeah, like obsidient. So all
this sounds great. We're kind of beating around the bush
about what a plasma torch can do. Um, And here's
(05:18):
the big, the big bomb boom. Plasma torches can burn
garbage and waste. Yes. And not only that, they can
burn it without combustion, which means there's not a bunch
of smoke. Yeah, and they can actually harvest the energy
in that garbage in incredible ways because it turns out
(05:40):
garbage is chock full of potential energy. You can release
that energy when you burn it, like just regular incineration,
but you only can maybe net about fift of the
energy that's locked into this big pile of garbage in
like a landfill, right, what a waste. With using a
plast the torch to create pyrolysis or gasification, you can
(06:04):
net up to eight of that energy that's locked in
their potentially crazy into garbage. So what we're talking about
is a potential future where we are using plasma torches
to create energy to sell back to the grid, to
create steam to turn those turbines, like we're always still
just knocked out that that's how you create energy these days,
(06:26):
I'm sorry electricity. Uh, and then sell off byproducts as
well and make more money. Yes, it's it's like I
cannot be more excited about this. And medical waste, chemical waste,
throw it in there. In fact, you know what, so
anything you got in their daddy, except for like radioactive material,
(06:50):
you gotta you gotta swine flu outbreak. Take those pig carcasses,
you throw them into the gasification chamber. There is no
swine flu left. It is totally gone. Or how about this.
I'll bring it to your farm. I'll have a small
one set up. You got a swine food outbreak, I'll
come to your farm and I'll burn up all those
nasty pigs. You've got some toxic waste. Oh well, we'll
(07:14):
just burn that in a gasification chamber and we'll break
it down to its innert components. It's not gonna hurt anybody,
no more, little lamb. I guess we keep saying burn. Well,
it's really tough not to ye to see torch torch. Yeah. Nice,
all right, So let's talk. Strickland wrote this, Jonathan Strickland
(07:34):
of Tech Stuff, and he did a great job and
he seemed to be as excited about it as we
are when he was writing it, because how can you
not be. Uh, Let's talk about some of the parts
of these things. The first thing that he points out
that we should point out is that um any plasma
conversion gasification facility is gonna be unique to its own knee.
(08:00):
They're all custom built at this point, there's no standardized unit.
There are some companies that are starting to like westing
House has some that you can just like what amounts
to off the shelf. The backyard gasifier pretty much. Yeah,
they I think they have like three different models, although
I'm sure they will custom build you whatever you want.
You're probably right. Uh But anyway, when he wrote this,
(08:23):
they weren't super standardized, and that's good that we're going
towards that. But um so what we're gonna talk about it,
you know, sort of depends on the system. But what
you're probably gonna have is conveyor belt that's gonna move
the garbage into the converter. Yeah, it's gonna play that
Bugs Bunny Powerhouse song. Oh man. Sometimes they will pre
treat the stuff like although you could, if you had
(08:45):
a big enough um machine, you could throw an entire
car in it, let's say, but sometimes it's more efficient
to break that car down and have a pilot, tires
and a pile of scrap metal and break it down
to its components, just to make it more efficient. Yeah,
because it's gonna use a lot less energy to break
it down into smaller parts and then feeded into the
the plasma torch incinerator. Then it will to just torch
(09:10):
it with the torch because these things use a lot
of energy, a lot of energy. They probably saved that
for when the investors come by right there like watching
now you see it? Now you don't. Uh, you have
your furnace, of course, and Strickland says, this is where
the magic happens um because you don't need oxygen. It
(09:30):
is air locked and airtight. Um junk goes in, but
the heat doesn't escape into the atmosphere or the gases
or the byproducts, which again that is really saying something
about the material science that's gone into this, because these
things are burning it like or heated to six thousand
degrees fahrenheigh again celsius, like the temperature of the sun
(09:55):
in this little in this canister right here. It's amazing.
I'm surprised plasma weapons for real. I think it's really
great that they don't. I looked into it. It's like
the realm of video games of course, like plasma guns
and stuff. Uh So, if you have a furnace, which
you will, you're gonna have the plasma torch, which is
in the lower like half of the furnace, let's say.
(10:18):
And they're also gonna have some drainage for that slag
and some venting for the gas, and it's going to
be water cooled. Yeah. One of the things that came
across to me and this researching this is these things
frequently have like really elegant designs. Right, So, like you
have a drain for the slag, which again is the
molten metal that's broken down to like it's constituent parts.
(10:39):
It's inorganic material and depending on how you treat it
will turn into glass or sand or nodules right asphalt um.
And then you have the gas going up, but you
also and you're draining off the slag, but you're also
keeping some in because it forms basically a coke bed
that keeps the furnace hot, which you have to use
(11:00):
less energy in your in your plasma torch, just like
having your own little lava bed just sort of sitting
there up. So that's pretty cool, but eventually you're gonna
probably want to get some of the slag out of
there because you're gonna do cool things with it, which
we'll talk about later. The plasma torch as themselves are clever,
amazing little instruments. It's basically a uh it's a lightning creator,
(11:26):
like they use an electrical arc. They push usually just
plain old air through it so that this electric charge
heats the air to these six thousand degrees, turns it
into plasma and then that's what's directed into the furnace.
It is very crazy, but that's that's what they're doing.
It's a little water cooled torch that that gets super hot.
(11:48):
Also doesn't use any kind of oxygen for combustion. Right.
And also these things you want to turn me on
with electrical stuff is show me a system that powers self,
right that I just love that more than anything in
these facilities, Um, I mean they've got they've got excess
energy to spare afterwards, not only can they power themselves
(12:11):
in a lot of cases, they're selling uh back to
the grid. Right. So, once you've got this initial input
where you get this thing going online and you heat
that plasma torch up for the first time, the moment
you start feeding feedstock into it, which in this case
is garbage plain old municipal solid waste from their lands
back to the future. Right, Um, Right, when you start
(12:33):
feeding that, it starts to produce energy. And the way
that it does that that gas that escapes sing Gaess,
let's talk about sing gas, dude. Sincas is a beautiful, amazing,
elegant thing. It has, it's combustible and it's untreated form,
so you could use it to burn like natural gas,
although it has about half the energy density of natural gas.
(12:56):
But if you're burning um garbage, it's just basically free
natural gas. The byproduct you can also treat it and
scrub it and just release it into the atmosphere is
innert gas. No problems with that water water scrubbed, right.
But when the sing gas exits the furnace, it's it
(13:17):
wants to expand. So if you're a very clever engineer,
you'll put what's called the gas turbine right there. A
gas turbine is spun by expanding gas. Well, you've got
plenty of that stuff, right, So you've got the sing
gas going through the gas turbine spinning that so it's
a generating electricity. It's also very hot, so once it
goes through that gas turbine, it can be caught by
(13:39):
what's called a heat recovery steam generator, right, And that's
just got some water going through it and it uses
hot this hot heat gas to turn the water into steam. Well,
that in turn turns another turbine. It generates even more electricity,
and then at the end, before you even treat it,
you have all the sin gas that could be used
to fuel a austion engine to generate even more electricity,
(14:03):
all from burning garbage. All right, we have to take
a break because I have to peel Josh off the
ceiling because you're so excited about sin gas. All right,
we'll be back in a second. How you feeling, buddy,
(14:39):
He okay, I'm so excited. This might as well be
ocean currents. Oh yeah, you like that one too, huh.
All right, so we're talking about sin gas. You need
to scrub it with water. They passes through a spray
of water. You're actually cleaning gas, which is pretty interesting
as a concept. And then there are all measure of
filters after word, to remove acids and things like that
(15:04):
which do form weird byproducts like salts and salts. It's
pretty neat. If you run it through a base scrubber,
it turns into salts. But there again inert like just
go ahead, pick up a handful and eat it. See
what happens? Probably nothing. And if you use an afterburner,
sometimes they'll use a secondary burner, uh, which is actually
(15:24):
just natural gas flames. I guess to finish the job.
Maybe yeah, to burn off like any particulate matter in
the gas, like if the if them, the process didn't
the sing gas isn't like pure this This basically burns
off particular matter. Or you can scrub it too. And
if you're doing all this, you're probably just going to
(15:46):
release it rather than try to trap it and use
it for combustion if you're gonna scrub it. But you
do need to scrub it, especially if you're gonna release
in the atmosphere, because it does contain some pretty nasty
stuff cabium, mercury, a lot of heavy metals. Because remember
what what this process does. The plasma torch and the
gasification process breaks these things down into the their constituent
(16:09):
um atoms and molecules and heavy metals and and um.
Some other things are not really good for us, even
in their most basic form. So for the most part,
it's gonna take something that chemically speaking, was once a
threat but has been broken down to its separate, innocuous
in our components. Some things, even when they're at their
(16:31):
most basic level, are still dangerous to us, like cadmium,
like mercury, like other heavy metals, and these things do
have to be taken out of the slag and or
the sin gas and disposed of. The thing is is,
if you put a thousand tons of municipal solid waste
into one of these furnaces, you're only gonna get about
(16:53):
twenty tons of that stuff. So so we will still
need landfills or something like that, but it will just
be for these very um dangerous chemicals are very dangerous,
like heavy metals or something like that. But you still
got great stuff out of the other nine times. Yeah, exactly.
So the byproducts we talked about, the sing gash, the slag,
(17:17):
and the heat are all used or not always used,
depends on what you're trying to do with your plant,
but they can potentially all be used. And the slag,
I think you already said you're getting. So that means
the weight of your resulting slag is only of what
you started with. So you took that buick, uh, and
(17:37):
it now weighs what it formally weighed. You could pick
it up if you wanted, Yeah, maybe, so, probably should
wait for it to cool down. And the volume is
only about five percent of the original waste volume. Uh.
And like you said, it looks like volcanic glass, and
they can use it in asphalt and concrete. They can
pour it directly into molds and make paper stones, and
(18:00):
it's all of a sudden, it's a it's a it's
something that you would find at your Big Bucks hardware
store for your garden, which is pretty amazing. Another UM
potential creation that you can use slag for is to
turn into rock wool. Man, I love this stuff right like,
so as the smolten slag is coming out, if you
expose it to compressed air blasts, it turns into this
(18:22):
thready very light but also very strong wool type material
like gray cotton candy. Is how um how Strickland puts it.
And there's a lot of uses for it, Like you
can use it in hydroponics. It's a it's a growing medium. UM.
You can also use it as insulation. Apparently it has
twice the insulating properties of UM fibery last. Yeah, it
(18:47):
is UM and you can also use the clean up
oil spills. That says, Yeah, this is the one that
really gets me going. It's lighter than water, so you
can just throw it on water and it'll sit there
and it's super absorbent, so it'll basicly, what they'll probably
do is contain it in something like a tube or
something and then just throw that tube in a big
(19:08):
circle around an oil spill. It'll float on the water
soak up the oil. Um, you just go back and
scoop up the Rockwell, yeah, I guess. So. I had
a friend that used to work and um, I need
to look that up and him up actually, because I
don't know where it went. But they were using banana
fibers to do the same thing to clean up oil spills.
(19:31):
Didn't we do one on oil spills? And like your friend,
you emailed with them or something like that about it.
I don't know, I feel like we did. It seems
like the distant past. But here's the cool thing about
the the rock will they currently use it. It's not
just something that you can only get as a byproduct
of creating the sin gas. It is produced by mining rocks.
(19:53):
You melt it down and then spin it sort of
like cotton candy, like you said, in a big machine.
And here's the cool thing about the gasification though. The
way they make the rock will now it's about ten
cents I'm sorry about a dollar a pound as a
byproduct That could be sold for ten cents a pound plus.
You don't have all of the um the disturbances in
(20:15):
the earth of mining rocks to turning the rock will
it's a byproduct of garbage that you're burning. That's great,
it's amazing. This is like when win win win win,
win win win. The slag is not leachable. That's another
cool thing that I found too. So Strickland specifically said,
you can't do this with radioactive material. I have seen
(20:35):
that you can. Yeah, And what you can do is
it'll turn it into the slag the subsidian glass, and
while it's still radioactive, it's not going anywhere. It's not
going to leach out into the soil, and it shall.
It should be stable like this for thousands of years,
conceivably until the radioactivity is not harmful the humans any longer.
(20:59):
It would be a really great You can just turn
it into these radioactive paver stones that yeah, that might
even glow at night. You'd have a nice little path
in your backyard and they'll glow. There's actually glass like that.
I can't remember what it's technical term is, but in
the mid twentieth century there was a big trend for
(21:20):
radio They called it vasoline glass because it glowed about
the color of vasoline, which is weird. But you can
find cut glass like ashtrays and sculptures that glow, and
the reason they glow because they're radioactive. I think, I
know what you're talking about, really neat looking, but it's
also like, I don't know if that should be in
my home. I would like your own cigarette holds. All right. Uh, well,
(21:44):
let's take another break here and we'll talk about where
we are now and where we could be headed with gasification.
(22:13):
All right, So here's what I've found in this might
not even be current. What I saw was that they're
currently eight functioning plasma gasification facilities in the world. That's
that sounds about right. One in Taiwan, when in Japan,
one in Canada, when in England, one here in the USA.
Where's the one in the US? Uh think Vero Beach, Florida.
(22:37):
Oh yeah, um, one in India, one in China, and
get this one, there's one on an aircraft carrier that
the US is using. The idea is that it's a
little small unit that basically just treats the on board waste.
So they envisioned the future where like cruise ships have
(22:58):
these things, and they don't have just dump all their
garbage in the ocean, while there's exactly you treat all
the waste, and I guess they could even sell buy
products that they wanted to. UM. There's one that's supposedly going.
I know you saw it was mothballed, right, But there's
one that's that's playing. They have like all the I
guess the UM licenses and certifications that they need to
(23:22):
build one in Port St. Lucy, Florida. And it's supposedly
it started out um as it was going to take
on a thousand tons of garbage a day and put
out UM third, it was gonna generate sixty seven megawatt
hours a day and sell thirty three of that, so
(23:43):
it would completely power its own operations and still have
thirty three megawatt hours to put out, like to sell
back to the grid. It's just more money that this
thing is making, right, UM. What I saw is that,
and I think it was like two thousand, fourteen UM.
It said that it was going to be about six
of that, so it would take in about six hundred
(24:03):
tons of garbage and generate a total output of twenty
two mega OTTs um but yeah, I don't know if
it's coming or not. But either way, the thing that
got me about this one, chuck, was that they planned
to not just accept landfill waste, but to go out
and mind existing landfills and use those things as feedstock.
(24:27):
And in fact, there was one in um uh Uashinai,
Japan that closed down because they ran out of feedstock.
They burned through all the garbage. Wo. Yeah, that's pretty
great when you're out of garbage exactly. They'll stop earlier
this year, I think um the world's largest plant um is.
(24:49):
They said it was near completion in May, so it
may be done at this point. But a company called
Air Products UM began processing three d and fifty thou
tons at this facility, creating power. Wow wait during tons. Yeah,
it's had enough powered for homes and uh fifty full
(25:10):
time jobs, which is not that many, not for that much,
but no, which is highly automated, I would guess, yeah,
which is sort of good in a way. Um, but
I guess you'd want more jobs created to this is
sort of a balancing acting, guess. Uh. And it costs
half a billion, five million dollars um and that is
one of the that's one of the stumbling blocks along
(25:33):
the way. Strickland points out that anytime you have a
new technology, it's gonna be super expensive to get going.
And everyone's dug in on the landfill and how we're
doing things now, so it's gonna take a lot. It'll
get cheaper over time like everything else. That's a new
new way of doing things. And you also have to
win over the establishment with with dollars. You have to
(25:54):
show them why it'll be better for them financially. Well. Yeah. Also,
if if say a municipality is kind of like, well,
we're not gonna close down the landfill, but if you
guys want to open one, go ahead. Well then you
have a plasma waste treatment facility and a landfill in
direct competition. And if you are their customer, meaning you
(26:16):
have some garbage that you want to take, you don't
care where your garbage is going, probably you want to
go to whoever has the cheaper fees for accepting that garbage.
Because a landfill is kind of an expensive proposition. They're
tipping fees are going to be high. It's basically the
only way they can make money if by charging people
to deposit their garbage with a plasma waste treatment facility,
(26:39):
They're making money all over the place. They're selling slag
as paper stuff, they're selling rockwell to clean up oil spills,
they're selling electricity back to the grid. So they're making
money in all these other ways that can pay for
the operation and generate a profit so they could keep
their tipping fees low. So if you own a landfill
and somebody opens a plasma waste tream facility in the
(27:00):
same city, you may be in a bit of trouble
business wise. Yeah, keep the tipping philo and uh and
not just people like municipalities will begin using your services ultimately,
because I think the one thing that's lacking still is
that environmental will right, And we're definitely a lot further
along than we were when Strickland wrote this article. But
(27:22):
I think that that that's one of the things that
makes it so attractive is we're gonna burn your garbage
and really really green sustainable ways create energy from it.
And we're gonna go get your old garbage and burn
that too and make even more electricity, and the plant's
gonna power itself with your garbage. It's it's a win
win win win Win Win So Strickland interviewed, Um he
(27:48):
was from Georgia Tech, right, a doctor Cisero. I'm sorry
cerci Cercio. Oh I thought it was Cistero too. Yeah,
it's a mine trick are before? See? Um? So Dr
Cercio said he envisions a future where you don't just
have like the big municipality plant, Like that'd be great
and all. Maybe you could bring a plasma torch to
(28:12):
a landfill and just bore a hole through it and
stick that plasma torch in there, cap it off, and
start burning that junk from the inside out. Yeah, but
I feel like, well, whoa, whoa, there could be a
coal steam nearby. What about what I thought? What about? Like,
uh what Centralia, Pennsylvania. Right, Centralia, Pennsylvania caught fire. There's
(28:35):
a combustion fire going on. If any coal steam was
exposed to this, it would it would just be decomposed
into carbon into its constituents. It wouldn't catch fire. That's
nothing to do with this again. So it's actually extremely
safe and the landfill itself would act as the furnace.
That's amazing, isn't it. Like it's really tough to think of,
(28:57):
really intense heat without thinking fire. But that that is
not where this goes. Uh or Dr Sir Sero cercio
Ceo says, hey, why not work together here and bring
a plasma converter to another existing traditional facility where they
(29:23):
can work hand in hand, like a coal fire power plant. Yeah,
why not? So what this would do is you would
just basically stick a plasma facility onto it into the
existing infrastructure and just accept garbage in there and burn
that and everything, and then the sin gas that's created
would be used to help fire the coal fire plants.
(29:43):
Then it would be used for combustion, right, and you
would be using less coal or less fossil fuels to
UM do the same thing to create steam to spin
the turbine, because ultimately that's what it all comes down
to with electricity. So if you have a UM a
green way to supplement the stuff, all you're doing is
using less fossil fuel too. It's also way cheaper because
(30:06):
then you're not having to treat the sin gas, which
apparently is half the cost of a plasma treatment facili
because these guys have to treat the escaping smoke and
everything anyway. So all you're doing is adding actually a
cleaner um, a cleaner fuel into the fire. It's going
to ultimately be cleaned down the line. Amazing. And then
(30:27):
we talked about um sort of half joking, but they're
serious about decontamination. You know, if you have an outbreak
on your farm and you have a bunch of uh,
you know, sad. But if you have a bunch of sick,
disease dead livestock, just bring out the h the P
three thousand, throw those cows in there, bing bang boom. Yeah,
(30:50):
maybe grind them up first two yeah, why not? Um? Yeah,
and you can do that with soil as well. Contaminated soil,
got an e. Coli outbreak and your spinach field not anymore,
But the dirty humans not anymore. Storm in there, medical
waste to biohezard. Nope, you've got inert stuff, poopy cruise ship,
(31:11):
the whole thing in there at once. I'm kidding about
dirty humans. By the way, why do I didn't even
need to say that. I don't think so. I hope not.
You never know, buddy. So that is plasma waste treatment,
hopefully the wave of the future. Yeah, we should title
this something a little sexier so people aren't like Yeah,
(31:32):
there's a lot of people because that should Yeah, because
then like even people that are super into like green
technologies will probably be like, I want to learn about
this weird science thing. Yeah, how about plasma waste treatment?
Please listen, Signed Josh and Chuck. Yeah, I like it.
It's a little clumsy, will work on it. If you
(31:53):
want to know more about plasma treatment facilities or any
of that stuff, you can take those words in the
search bar at how of words dot com. And since
Chuck said sexy, it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna
call this you guys got Africa right. Thank you, Hey guys,
listen to your podcast about female puberty and was very
impressed with the thoughtfulness and sensitivity in which you explain
(32:16):
things and gave advice. Um, by the way, we heard
from a lot of people on that, and thank you.
A lot of young women, a lot of grown women,
a lot of men, and Dad's uh, and that one
meant a lot. It was really good to get that
one right, I think. Um. The one thing that we
didn't quite get right that someone has pointed out more
than a few times is uh, we said boy crazy
(32:39):
a lot and we should have gone out of our
way to say, like, you know, you might also be
girl crazy or you might not have sexual feelings and thoughts.
I wish we had that one back. I know. That's
you know, I'm giving us a break on that because
we people know how we feel about that stuff. We
just didn't pointed out as strongly as we should have.
But that's I mean, that's how things change and improved
(33:00):
those you know what we're saying that now, young young
ladies out there going through puberty, you might like other girls,
you might not like boys or girls. Uh And all
that's okay too, Yes, all right, thanks for saying that.
So back to this, probably listen to about two hundred
or more of your podcasts, man, you get a long
way to go, buddy. Uh. And I'm always like, I'm
almost the three oh one, only five after that. I'm
(33:25):
always happy to hear you. Guys, do your best to
be specific when you make references to events in countries
or geographic regions. What I mean by this is you
don't generalize like a lot of people do and say crap,
like in Africa they blah blah blah, or in Europe
it's normal to blah blah blah when you got to
the part of your latest show where you talk about
female puberty rights. Was elated to hear you being careful
(33:46):
enough to say, in Ghana, there is a village where
dot dot dot. The reason for my reaction is that
I've lived in the US for twenty years, but I'm
from Ghana. There at least twenty distinct ethnic groups and
languages in Ghana alone, and I know for a fact
that the ritual you described is not done in all
of them. In fact, I've heard of it, but I
don't think it happens anymore. By the way, the official
language in Ghana is English, so we are able to
(34:09):
communicate with each other. Nothing irritates US Africans more than
to hear someone started sentence within Africa. I bet it's
continent that huge, because no one says, well, in North America, no,
but they just say, like in the US, but at
least it's a confederation of like associated states. In Africa,
(34:30):
it's like, yeah, you're you're putting the whole continent, and
it's all these different countries with all these different cultures. Yeah,
it's amazing. So thanks guys for being so thoughtful and professional.
Eric from Seattle by way of Ghana. I guess yeah,
thanks a lot. Eric appreciate that. Thank you agreed. If
you want to get in touch with us, whether to
give us big ups or pooh pooh us or um,
(34:55):
submit some sort of neutral statement that's a fact based
who knows, we get a lot. Yeah. You can tweet
to us at s Y s K podcast. You can
join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at
how stuff works dot com and has always joined us
at our home on the web, Stuff you should Know
dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics.
(35:22):
Does it how stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you should know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey you welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, guest producer. Noel is here.
Noel's moved in. Yeah, so what that that cod is
(00:22):
on the plan? He works constantly. Uh. You know what
my superhero nickname was as a child. Uh, I'll tell
you plasma Boy. No, it wasn't. I'm just kidding. That
was a weird joke. Why we're talking about plasma Plasma boy? Yeah,
(00:44):
like a radioactive man na plasma boy. Yeah, but it
wasn't plasma boy. It was what was it? What was
the Sidekicks name? Radioactive Man Sidekicks? Uh? Now I want
to know, dude. Well, that's a band, I know, but
(01:06):
I wonder if it's based on that maybe. I don't know.
We'll find out, won't we. Well, we'll look it up
and then we'll find out with a million emails. So, um,
plasma boy. Huh. I wish you must have an affinity
for this episode. Then it's great, Chuck. You know, when
lightning strikes the earth, we did a pretty awesome podcast
(01:28):
on lightning. Do you remember we talked about how it
literally rips the sky open. It rips the atmosphere open,
and as it's traveling down through this ripped open atmosphere,
the air on either side of this stuff is superheated
to about twenty thousand degrees. It's more than three times
the surface temperature of the sun celsius. I should say celsius,
(01:53):
not even fair enhog. It's about twelve grand celsius. Roughly,
it's super hot, right, I'm sorry. Fare Kneite does a
fare kneit. Yeah, twelve grand fare kneit. Yeah, Okay. At
any rate degrees is lightning. And this when the air
is superheated, it takes on what's commonly called the fourth
state of matter, plasma. Right, so you've got solid, boring
(02:19):
liquid gas. Awesome, Okay, but plasma is super awesome gas.
It's it's a bit like a gas, and usually it
starts out as a gas, but it it holds an
electro magnetic field, or creates an electromagnetic field, and it
holds an electrical charge. It has free roaming electrons. It's
(02:41):
running through it doing all sorts of crazy stuff. It
just basically breaks gas into like this, this crazy, weird
different type of fluid and that's plasma and it's awesome
ionized gas. Yes, pretty good stuff. Uh, super high tempts,
like you are saying. And because it's a super high attempt,
(03:03):
what it can do is it it can break down,
it can it can it can cause something solid to
undergo what's called molecular dissociation, which means it's not just
burning something, it's not melting something. It's actually exposing it
to so much heat that the molecular bonds break apart
(03:23):
and it becomes a pile of its components and it
breaks it down to from its compound of molecules to
its atomic components. Yeah, pretty amazing. It is very amazing. UM.
And it's like you said, it's not it's not UM
burning Like this process of UM using a plasma torch
(03:47):
to break something down to decompose it is actually what
it's doing. UM doesn't even need to use oxygen nope. UM.
So that means that it's a process called pyrolysis, which
is intense, intense heat that creates decomposition in some sort
of matter, especially organic matter, and UM. As a result,
(04:07):
you get these byproducts. If it's a an organic piece
of materials, say like some corn stalks that are using
a biomass feedstock. Um, it will become something called sin gas. Right.
And then if it's something like um old pair of
roller skates, yeah, we'll save those. First of all, they're
(04:32):
just not very good any longer. So the leather is
was it at one point organic? I guess it would
still be considered an organic material that turns into gas.
The metal in the skates that will turn into something
called slag, right, and it undergoes the process of vitrification, Yeah,
(04:53):
it does. Vitrification is where this stuff becomes so the
bombs break between it so thoroughly that it becomes basically
a form of glass, yeah, like volcanic glass, almost at
least what it looks like, Yeah, like obsidient. So all
this sounds great. We're kind of beating around the bush
about what a plasma torch can do. Um, And here's
(05:18):
the big, the big bomb boom. Plasma torches can burn
garbage and waste. Yes. And not only that, they can
burn it without combustion, which means there's not a bunch
of smoke. Yeah, and they can actually harvest the energy
in that garbage in incredible ways because it turns out
(05:40):
garbage is chock full of potential energy. You can release
that energy when you burn it, like just regular incineration,
but you only can maybe net about fift of the
energy that's locked into this big pile of garbage in
like a landfill, right, what a waste. With using a
plast the torch to create pyrolysis or gasification, you can
(06:04):
net up to eight of that energy that's locked in
their potentially crazy into garbage. So what we're talking about
is a potential future where we are using plasma torches
to create energy to sell back to the grid, to
create steam to turn those turbines, like we're always still
just knocked out that that's how you create energy these days,
(06:26):
I'm sorry electricity. Uh, and then sell off byproducts as
well and make more money. Yes, it's it's like I
cannot be more excited about this. And medical waste, chemical waste,
throw it in there. In fact, you know what, so
anything you got in their daddy, except for like radioactive material,
(06:50):
you gotta you gotta swine flu outbreak. Take those pig carcasses,
you throw them into the gasification chamber. There is no
swine flu left. It is totally gone. Or how about this.
I'll bring it to your farm. I'll have a small
one set up. You got a swine food outbreak, I'll
come to your farm and I'll burn up all those
nasty pigs. You've got some toxic waste. Oh well, we'll
(07:14):
just burn that in a gasification chamber and we'll break
it down to its innert components. It's not gonna hurt anybody,
no more, little lamb. I guess we keep saying burn. Well,
it's really tough not to ye to see torch torch. Yeah. Nice,
all right, So let's talk. Strickland wrote this, Jonathan Strickland
(07:34):
of Tech Stuff, and he did a great job and
he seemed to be as excited about it as we
are when he was writing it, because how can you
not be. Uh, Let's talk about some of the parts
of these things. The first thing that he points out
that we should point out is that um any plasma
conversion gasification facility is gonna be unique to its own knee.
(08:00):
They're all custom built at this point, there's no standardized unit.
There are some companies that are starting to like westing
House has some that you can just like what amounts
to off the shelf. The backyard gasifier pretty much. Yeah,
they I think they have like three different models, although
I'm sure they will custom build you whatever you want.
You're probably right. Uh But anyway, when he wrote this,
(08:23):
they weren't super standardized, and that's good that we're going
towards that. But um so what we're gonna talk about it,
you know, sort of depends on the system. But what
you're probably gonna have is conveyor belt that's gonna move
the garbage into the converter. Yeah, it's gonna play that
Bugs Bunny Powerhouse song. Oh man. Sometimes they will pre
treat the stuff like although you could, if you had
(08:45):
a big enough um machine, you could throw an entire
car in it, let's say, but sometimes it's more efficient
to break that car down and have a pilot, tires
and a pile of scrap metal and break it down
to its components, just to make it more efficient. Yeah,
because it's gonna use a lot less energy to break
it down into smaller parts and then feeded into the
the plasma torch incinerator. Then it will to just torch
(09:10):
it with the torch because these things use a lot
of energy, a lot of energy. They probably saved that
for when the investors come by right there like watching
now you see it? Now you don't. Uh, you have
your furnace, of course, and Strickland says, this is where
the magic happens um because you don't need oxygen. It
(09:30):
is air locked and airtight. Um junk goes in, but
the heat doesn't escape into the atmosphere or the gases
or the byproducts, which again that is really saying something
about the material science that's gone into this, because these
things are burning it like or heated to six thousand
degrees fahrenheigh again celsius, like the temperature of the sun
(09:55):
in this little in this canister right here. It's amazing.
I'm surprised plasma weapons for real. I think it's really
great that they don't. I looked into it. It's like
the realm of video games of course, like plasma guns
and stuff. Uh So, if you have a furnace, which
you will, you're gonna have the plasma torch, which is
in the lower like half of the furnace, let's say.
(10:18):
And they're also gonna have some drainage for that slag
and some venting for the gas, and it's going to
be water cooled. Yeah. One of the things that came
across to me and this researching this is these things
frequently have like really elegant designs. Right, So, like you
have a drain for the slag, which again is the
molten metal that's broken down to like it's constituent parts.
(10:39):
It's inorganic material and depending on how you treat it
will turn into glass or sand or nodules right asphalt um.
And then you have the gas going up, but you
also and you're draining off the slag, but you're also
keeping some in because it forms basically a coke bed
that keeps the furnace hot, which you have to use
(11:00):
less energy in your in your plasma torch, just like
having your own little lava bed just sort of sitting
there up. So that's pretty cool, but eventually you're gonna
probably want to get some of the slag out of
there because you're gonna do cool things with it, which
we'll talk about later. The plasma torch as themselves are clever,
amazing little instruments. It's basically a uh it's a lightning creator,
(11:26):
like they use an electrical arc. They push usually just
plain old air through it so that this electric charge
heats the air to these six thousand degrees, turns it
into plasma and then that's what's directed into the furnace.
It is very crazy, but that's that's what they're doing.
It's a little water cooled torch that that gets super hot.
(11:48):
Also doesn't use any kind of oxygen for combustion. Right.
And also these things you want to turn me on
with electrical stuff is show me a system that powers self,
right that I just love that more than anything in
these facilities, Um, I mean they've got they've got excess
energy to spare afterwards, not only can they power themselves
(12:11):
in a lot of cases, they're selling uh back to
the grid. Right. So, once you've got this initial input
where you get this thing going online and you heat
that plasma torch up for the first time, the moment
you start feeding feedstock into it, which in this case
is garbage plain old municipal solid waste from their lands
back to the future. Right, Um, Right, when you start
(12:33):
feeding that, it starts to produce energy. And the way
that it does that that gas that escapes sing Gaess,
let's talk about sing gas, dude. Sincas is a beautiful, amazing,
elegant thing. It has, it's combustible and it's untreated form,
so you could use it to burn like natural gas,
although it has about half the energy density of natural gas.
(12:56):
But if you're burning um garbage, it's just basically free
natural gas. The byproduct you can also treat it and
scrub it and just release it into the atmosphere is
innert gas. No problems with that water water scrubbed, right.
But when the sing gas exits the furnace, it's it
(13:17):
wants to expand. So if you're a very clever engineer,
you'll put what's called the gas turbine right there. A
gas turbine is spun by expanding gas. Well, you've got
plenty of that stuff, right, So you've got the sing
gas going through the gas turbine spinning that so it's
a generating electricity. It's also very hot, so once it
goes through that gas turbine, it can be caught by
(13:39):
what's called a heat recovery steam generator, right, And that's
just got some water going through it and it uses
hot this hot heat gas to turn the water into steam. Well,
that in turn turns another turbine. It generates even more electricity,
and then at the end, before you even treat it,
you have all the sin gas that could be used
to fuel a austion engine to generate even more electricity,
(14:03):
all from burning garbage. All right, we have to take
a break because I have to peel Josh off the
ceiling because you're so excited about sin gas. All right,
we'll be back in a second. How you feeling, buddy,
(14:39):
He okay, I'm so excited. This might as well be
ocean currents. Oh yeah, you like that one too, huh.
All right, so we're talking about sin gas. You need
to scrub it with water. They passes through a spray
of water. You're actually cleaning gas, which is pretty interesting
as a concept. And then there are all measure of
filters after word, to remove acids and things like that
(15:04):
which do form weird byproducts like salts and salts. It's
pretty neat. If you run it through a base scrubber,
it turns into salts. But there again inert like just
go ahead, pick up a handful and eat it. See
what happens? Probably nothing. And if you use an afterburner,
sometimes they'll use a secondary burner, uh, which is actually
(15:24):
just natural gas flames. I guess to finish the job.
Maybe yeah, to burn off like any particulate matter in
the gas, like if the if them, the process didn't
the sing gas isn't like pure this This basically burns
off particular matter. Or you can scrub it too. And
if you're doing all this, you're probably just going to
(15:46):
release it rather than try to trap it and use
it for combustion if you're gonna scrub it. But you
do need to scrub it, especially if you're gonna release
in the atmosphere, because it does contain some pretty nasty
stuff cabium, mercury, a lot of heavy metals. Because remember
what what this process does. The plasma torch and the
gasification process breaks these things down into the their constituent
(16:09):
um atoms and molecules and heavy metals and and um.
Some other things are not really good for us, even
in their most basic form. So for the most part,
it's gonna take something that chemically speaking, was once a
threat but has been broken down to its separate, innocuous
in our components. Some things, even when they're at their
(16:31):
most basic level, are still dangerous to us, like cadmium,
like mercury, like other heavy metals, and these things do
have to be taken out of the slag and or
the sin gas and disposed of. The thing is is,
if you put a thousand tons of municipal solid waste
into one of these furnaces, you're only gonna get about
(16:53):
twenty tons of that stuff. So so we will still
need landfills or something like that, but it will just
be for these very um dangerous chemicals are very dangerous,
like heavy metals or something like that. But you still
got great stuff out of the other nine times. Yeah, exactly.
So the byproducts we talked about, the sing gash, the slag,
(17:17):
and the heat are all used or not always used,
depends on what you're trying to do with your plant,
but they can potentially all be used. And the slag,
I think you already said you're getting. So that means
the weight of your resulting slag is only of what
you started with. So you took that buick, uh, and
(17:37):
it now weighs what it formally weighed. You could pick
it up if you wanted, Yeah, maybe, so, probably should
wait for it to cool down. And the volume is
only about five percent of the original waste volume. Uh.
And like you said, it looks like volcanic glass, and
they can use it in asphalt and concrete. They can
pour it directly into molds and make paper stones, and
(18:00):
it's all of a sudden, it's a it's a it's
something that you would find at your Big Bucks hardware
store for your garden, which is pretty amazing. Another UM
potential creation that you can use slag for is to
turn into rock wool. Man, I love this stuff right like,
so as the smolten slag is coming out, if you
expose it to compressed air blasts, it turns into this
(18:22):
thready very light but also very strong wool type material
like gray cotton candy. Is how um how Strickland puts it.
And there's a lot of uses for it, Like you
can use it in hydroponics. It's a it's a growing medium. UM.
You can also use it as insulation. Apparently it has
twice the insulating properties of UM fibery last. Yeah, it
(18:47):
is UM and you can also use the clean up
oil spills. That says, Yeah, this is the one that
really gets me going. It's lighter than water, so you
can just throw it on water and it'll sit there
and it's super absorbent, so it'll basicly, what they'll probably
do is contain it in something like a tube or
something and then just throw that tube in a big
(19:08):
circle around an oil spill. It'll float on the water
soak up the oil. Um, you just go back and
scoop up the Rockwell, yeah, I guess. So. I had
a friend that used to work and um, I need
to look that up and him up actually, because I
don't know where it went. But they were using banana
fibers to do the same thing to clean up oil spills.
(19:31):
Didn't we do one on oil spills? And like your friend,
you emailed with them or something like that about it.
I don't know, I feel like we did. It seems
like the distant past. But here's the cool thing about
the the rock will they currently use it. It's not
just something that you can only get as a byproduct
of creating the sin gas. It is produced by mining rocks.
(19:53):
You melt it down and then spin it sort of
like cotton candy, like you said, in a big machine.
And here's the cool thing about the gasification though. The
way they make the rock will now it's about ten
cents I'm sorry about a dollar a pound as a
byproduct That could be sold for ten cents a pound plus.
You don't have all of the um the disturbances in
(20:15):
the earth of mining rocks to turning the rock will
it's a byproduct of garbage that you're burning. That's great,
it's amazing. This is like when win win win win,
win win win. The slag is not leachable. That's another
cool thing that I found too. So Strickland specifically said,
you can't do this with radioactive material. I have seen
(20:35):
that you can. Yeah, And what you can do is
it'll turn it into the slag the subsidian glass, and
while it's still radioactive, it's not going anywhere. It's not
going to leach out into the soil, and it shall.
It should be stable like this for thousands of years,
conceivably until the radioactivity is not harmful the humans any longer.
(20:59):
It would be a really great You can just turn
it into these radioactive paver stones that yeah, that might
even glow at night. You'd have a nice little path
in your backyard and they'll glow. There's actually glass like that.
I can't remember what it's technical term is, but in
the mid twentieth century there was a big trend for
(21:20):
radio They called it vasoline glass because it glowed about
the color of vasoline, which is weird. But you can
find cut glass like ashtrays and sculptures that glow, and
the reason they glow because they're radioactive. I think, I
know what you're talking about, really neat looking, but it's
also like, I don't know if that should be in
my home. I would like your own cigarette holds. All right. Uh, well,
(21:44):
let's take another break here and we'll talk about where
we are now and where we could be headed with gasification.
(22:13):
All right, So here's what I've found in this might
not even be current. What I saw was that they're
currently eight functioning plasma gasification facilities in the world. That's
that sounds about right. One in Taiwan, when in Japan,
one in Canada, when in England, one here in the USA.
Where's the one in the US? Uh think Vero Beach, Florida.
(22:37):
Oh yeah, um, one in India, one in China, and
get this one, there's one on an aircraft carrier that
the US is using. The idea is that it's a
little small unit that basically just treats the on board waste.
So they envisioned the future where like cruise ships have
(22:58):
these things, and they don't have just dump all their
garbage in the ocean, while there's exactly you treat all
the waste, and I guess they could even sell buy
products that they wanted to. UM. There's one that's supposedly going.
I know you saw it was mothballed, right, But there's
one that's that's playing. They have like all the I
guess the UM licenses and certifications that they need to
(23:22):
build one in Port St. Lucy, Florida. And it's supposedly
it started out um as it was going to take
on a thousand tons of garbage a day and put
out UM third, it was gonna generate sixty seven megawatt
hours a day and sell thirty three of that, so
(23:43):
it would completely power its own operations and still have
thirty three megawatt hours to put out, like to sell
back to the grid. It's just more money that this
thing is making, right, UM. What I saw is that,
and I think it was like two thousand, fourteen UM.
It said that it was going to be about six
of that, so it would take in about six hundred
(24:03):
tons of garbage and generate a total output of twenty
two mega OTTs um but yeah, I don't know if
it's coming or not. But either way, the thing that
got me about this one, chuck, was that they planned
to not just accept landfill waste, but to go out
and mind existing landfills and use those things as feedstock.
(24:27):
And in fact, there was one in um uh Uashinai,
Japan that closed down because they ran out of feedstock.
They burned through all the garbage. Wo. Yeah, that's pretty
great when you're out of garbage exactly. They'll stop earlier
this year, I think um the world's largest plant um is.
(24:49):
They said it was near completion in May, so it
may be done at this point. But a company called
Air Products UM began processing three d and fifty thou
tons at this facility, creating power. Wow wait during tons. Yeah,
it's had enough powered for homes and uh fifty full
(25:10):
time jobs, which is not that many, not for that much,
but no, which is highly automated, I would guess, yeah,
which is sort of good in a way. Um, but
I guess you'd want more jobs created to this is
sort of a balancing acting, guess. Uh. And it costs
half a billion, five million dollars um and that is
one of the that's one of the stumbling blocks along
(25:33):
the way. Strickland points out that anytime you have a
new technology, it's gonna be super expensive to get going.
And everyone's dug in on the landfill and how we're
doing things now, so it's gonna take a lot. It'll
get cheaper over time like everything else. That's a new
new way of doing things. And you also have to
win over the establishment with with dollars. You have to
(25:54):
show them why it'll be better for them financially. Well. Yeah. Also,
if if say a municipality is kind of like, well,
we're not gonna close down the landfill, but if you
guys want to open one, go ahead. Well then you
have a plasma waste treatment facility and a landfill in
direct competition. And if you are their customer, meaning you
(26:16):
have some garbage that you want to take, you don't
care where your garbage is going, probably you want to
go to whoever has the cheaper fees for accepting that garbage.
Because a landfill is kind of an expensive proposition. They're
tipping fees are going to be high. It's basically the
only way they can make money if by charging people
to deposit their garbage with a plasma waste treatment facility,
(26:39):
They're making money all over the place. They're selling slag
as paper stuff, they're selling rockwell to clean up oil spills,
they're selling electricity back to the grid. So they're making
money in all these other ways that can pay for
the operation and generate a profit so they could keep
their tipping fees low. So if you own a landfill
and somebody opens a plasma waste tream facility in the
(27:00):
same city, you may be in a bit of trouble
business wise. Yeah, keep the tipping philo and uh and
not just people like municipalities will begin using your services ultimately,
because I think the one thing that's lacking still is
that environmental will right, And we're definitely a lot further
along than we were when Strickland wrote this article. But
(27:22):
I think that that that's one of the things that
makes it so attractive is we're gonna burn your garbage
and really really green sustainable ways create energy from it.
And we're gonna go get your old garbage and burn
that too and make even more electricity, and the plant's
gonna power itself with your garbage. It's it's a win
win win win Win Win So Strickland interviewed, Um he
(27:48):
was from Georgia Tech, right, a doctor Cisero. I'm sorry
cerci Cercio. Oh I thought it was Cistero too. Yeah,
it's a mine trick are before? See? Um? So Dr
Cercio said he envisions a future where you don't just
have like the big municipality plant, Like that'd be great
and all. Maybe you could bring a plasma torch to
(28:12):
a landfill and just bore a hole through it and
stick that plasma torch in there, cap it off, and
start burning that junk from the inside out. Yeah, but
I feel like, well, whoa, whoa, there could be a
coal steam nearby. What about what I thought? What about? Like,
uh what Centralia, Pennsylvania. Right, Centralia, Pennsylvania caught fire. There's
(28:35):
a combustion fire going on. If any coal steam was
exposed to this, it would it would just be decomposed
into carbon into its constituents. It wouldn't catch fire. That's
nothing to do with this again. So it's actually extremely
safe and the landfill itself would act as the furnace.
That's amazing, isn't it. Like it's really tough to think of,
(28:57):
really intense heat without thinking fire. But that that is
not where this goes. Uh or Dr Sir Sero cercio
Ceo says, hey, why not work together here and bring
a plasma converter to another existing traditional facility where they
(29:23):
can work hand in hand, like a coal fire power plant. Yeah,
why not? So what this would do is you would
just basically stick a plasma facility onto it into the
existing infrastructure and just accept garbage in there and burn
that and everything, and then the sin gas that's created
would be used to help fire the coal fire plants.
(29:43):
Then it would be used for combustion, right, and you
would be using less coal or less fossil fuels to
UM do the same thing to create steam to spin
the turbine, because ultimately that's what it all comes down
to with electricity. So if you have a UM a
green way to supplement the stuff, all you're doing is
using less fossil fuel too. It's also way cheaper because
(30:06):
then you're not having to treat the sin gas, which
apparently is half the cost of a plasma treatment facili
because these guys have to treat the escaping smoke and
everything anyway. So all you're doing is adding actually a
cleaner um, a cleaner fuel into the fire. It's going
to ultimately be cleaned down the line. Amazing. And then
(30:27):
we talked about um sort of half joking, but they're
serious about decontamination. You know, if you have an outbreak
on your farm and you have a bunch of uh,
you know, sad. But if you have a bunch of sick,
disease dead livestock, just bring out the h the P
three thousand, throw those cows in there, bing bang boom. Yeah,
(30:50):
maybe grind them up first two yeah, why not? Um? Yeah,
and you can do that with soil as well. Contaminated soil,
got an e. Coli outbreak and your spinach field not anymore,
But the dirty humans not anymore. Storm in there, medical
waste to biohezard. Nope, you've got inert stuff, poopy cruise ship,
(31:11):
the whole thing in there at once. I'm kidding about
dirty humans. By the way, why do I didn't even
need to say that. I don't think so. I hope not.
You never know, buddy. So that is plasma waste treatment,
hopefully the wave of the future. Yeah, we should title
this something a little sexier so people aren't like Yeah,
(31:32):
there's a lot of people because that should Yeah, because
then like even people that are super into like green
technologies will probably be like, I want to learn about
this weird science thing. Yeah, how about plasma waste treatment?
Please listen, Signed Josh and Chuck. Yeah, I like it.
It's a little clumsy, will work on it. If you
(31:53):
want to know more about plasma treatment facilities or any
of that stuff, you can take those words in the
search bar at how of words dot com. And since
Chuck said sexy, it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna
call this you guys got Africa right. Thank you, Hey guys,
listen to your podcast about female puberty and was very
impressed with the thoughtfulness and sensitivity in which you explain
(32:16):
things and gave advice. Um, by the way, we heard
from a lot of people on that, and thank you.
A lot of young women, a lot of grown women,
a lot of men, and Dad's uh, and that one
meant a lot. It was really good to get that
one right, I think. Um. The one thing that we
didn't quite get right that someone has pointed out more
than a few times is uh, we said boy crazy
(32:39):
a lot and we should have gone out of our
way to say, like, you know, you might also be
girl crazy or you might not have sexual feelings and thoughts.
I wish we had that one back. I know. That's
you know, I'm giving us a break on that because
we people know how we feel about that stuff. We
just didn't pointed out as strongly as we should have.
But that's I mean, that's how things change and improved
(33:00):
those you know what we're saying that now, young young
ladies out there going through puberty, you might like other girls,
you might not like boys or girls. Uh And all
that's okay too, Yes, all right, thanks for saying that.
So back to this, probably listen to about two hundred
or more of your podcasts, man, you get a long
way to go, buddy. Uh. And I'm always like, I'm
almost the three oh one, only five after that. I'm
(33:25):
always happy to hear you. Guys, do your best to
be specific when you make references to events in countries
or geographic regions. What I mean by this is you
don't generalize like a lot of people do and say crap,
like in Africa they blah blah blah, or in Europe
it's normal to blah blah blah when you got to
the part of your latest show where you talk about
female puberty rights. Was elated to hear you being careful
(33:46):
enough to say, in Ghana, there is a village where
dot dot dot. The reason for my reaction is that
I've lived in the US for twenty years, but I'm
from Ghana. There at least twenty distinct ethnic groups and
languages in Ghana alone, and I know for a fact
that the ritual you described is not done in all
of them. In fact, I've heard of it, but I
don't think it happens anymore. By the way, the official
language in Ghana is English, so we are able to
(34:09):
communicate with each other. Nothing irritates US Africans more than
to hear someone started sentence within Africa. I bet it's
continent that huge, because no one says, well, in North America, no,
but they just say, like in the US, but at
least it's a confederation of like associated states. In Africa,
(34:30):
it's like, yeah, you're you're putting the whole continent, and
it's all these different countries with all these different cultures. Yeah,
it's amazing. So thanks guys for being so thoughtful and professional.
Eric from Seattle by way of Ghana. I guess yeah,
thanks a lot. Eric appreciate that. Thank you agreed. If
you want to get in touch with us, whether to
give us big ups or pooh pooh us or um,
(34:55):
submit some sort of neutral statement that's a fact based
who knows, we get a lot. Yeah. You can tweet
to us at s Y s K podcast. You can
join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at
how stuff works dot com and has always joined us
at our home on the web, Stuff you should Know
dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics.
(35:22):
Does it how stuff Works dot com
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