Explore plasma tech
Explore plasma tech
Renewable energy in Hawaii is currently a big topic. There are good and bad forms of renewable energy. Also, there are new energy technologies that many are not now aware of.
When former Mayor Harry Kim wanted to put in a waste-to-energy plant by Wheelabrator Technologies Inc., as an electrical engineer, I gave testimony before the County Council in Pahoa that it used obsolete technology; it required fuel to operate, as well as chemicals such as activated charcoal and others to prevent pollution.
The original cost of the plant, as well as the monthly costs of operation, would have been too expensive. I also mentioned a superior technology known as plasma incineration that was much less polluting and produced its own fuel, as well as excess electricity and other commercially valuable products.
Plasco Energy Group has successfully operated a plasma incineration municipal waste-to-energy plant in Ottawa, Canada, since 2008. Ninety-five percent of the waste is changed into commercially saleable products. Plasco has also won one of the top 10 clean energy company awards in Canada.
Two companies, Green Power Systems and Geoplasma, are proposing similar plants for Florida using technology developed by Westinghouse Plasma Corp. Their estimated power production is about 1 megawatt hour per ton of municipal waste. The County Council really needs to check these companies out.
Other energy technologies using plasma are being developed which will truly change everything. Inteligentry Group is now licensing their Plasmic Transition Engine to manufacturers. This cool-running engine uses virtually zero fuel and has no exhaust. A noble gas is changed from a gas to plasma and back to a gas in one piston stroke. The same gas stays in the cylinder until, after three months to a year of running, a small amount has to be added because of slight leakage. A two-cylinder engine can develop over 275 horsepower and cost less than $500. One ran a 500-kilowatt generator at 1800 rpm. Imagine the possibilities!
The Keshe Foundation claims to have a 3-4 kilowatt plasma based generator for home use costing about 5,000 euros with a 100-euro per year maintenance cost. Kiril Chukanov, of Chukanov Quantum Energy, has announced that his “Angel-I” generator prototype has been completed, and produces around 30 kilowatts of output with only 7.5 kilowatts of input, by harnessing quantum free energy in ball lighting.
I would hold off on plans to expand any kind of expensive alternative energy projects like geothermal or wind farms until this new plasma technology has been looked at.
Herbert Dorsey
Pahoa
Oily independence
I’m all for moving Hawaii toward petroleum independence, but looking to geothermal won’t do that now or in the foreseeable future. Hawaii imports almost all of its petroleum in the form of crude oil, which gets refined right here.
HELCO and the other Hawaii electric utilities burn a heavy fraction of that crude oil that they call “residual fuel oil,”and it is a product that the refineries export from Hawaii because the local demand does not equal the supply. They have a surplus of residual fuel oil because the real driver behind the amount of crude oil the state imports is jet fuel.
If we really want to reduce our dependence on petroleum, we need to reduce our economy’s dependence on tourism, or we need to find a way to bring visitors to our islands by some other means than airplanes. Then we can focus on the next driver of oil demand: ground transportation fuel.
Until we accomplish those tasks, any talk of reducing our oil dependence by making electricity from our geothermal resources makes no sense — or worse, constitutes a willful lie.
Yen Chin
Orchidland
Time for some facts
I went to my third County Council meeting in 15 years (on Tuesday, April 24). Now I remember why I don’t go to them.
The agenda was geothermal but, as with everything in Puna, everyone in attendance was against it. As a scientist, I expected to hear facts. What I heard — for the first hour — was why drilling holes in solidified lava was killing the Goddess Pele. Who only became a goddess when she died.
OK, people can believe what they like. One must respect people who choose to believe them. But Liholiho, Kamehameha II, overthrew the kapu system in 1819. BEFORE the missionaries arrived. BEFORE Christianity.
The second part of the presentation concerned the terrible operation of the geothermal plant between 1983 and 1999 and up to 2004. I don’t think there is any argument about that. It was a disaster. I do not mean to suggest that the gases in lava are good for you. They are not. They are toxic.
However, even if every well failed, or was sheared, it would simply plug up from the bottom, and that’s why they have to drill new ones to replace old ones.
There is no way that any of those wells are going to release 400 metric tons of toxic gas every day — which is what is happening naturally — each and every day. But for the same money, every home on the island could have solar.
Thomas C. Burnett
Pahoa