What’s a Waste Converter?

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A waste converter is a type of machine that takes industrial by-products or residential and municipal wastes and sewage and transforms them into environmentally safe material that is useful as a fuel source or feedstock for other types of production. Waste treatment has evolved as a better understanding of how organic and synthetic materials can be broken down into simpler and safer compounds. The process replaces previous waste disposal methods that have significant environmental impacts, such as the widespread use of landfills and incineration. Depending on the nature of the waste itself, a waste converter is usually designed to pasteurize and sterilize the waste in the process to make sure the final products produced are safe for further human use.

One of the first forms of sterilization of waste contaminated by bacterial germs or other pathogenic agents was that of the autoclave. The autoclave has been a staple piece of equipment in biological laboratories since it was invented in 1879, and hospitals and industrial facilities that deal with organic materials have relied on it for years. Small versions of autoclaves are used to sterilize surgical instruments and large ones to sterilize medical and biological waste before disposal or incineration, but both work on the principle of killing microorganisms by subjecting them to high pressures and superheated steam. As technology advances, a waste converter for sterilizing biological materials such as an autoclave no longer requires high pressures or the addition of water, as the water in the material itself is converted to steam.

Thermal treatment of waste by incinerators has also posed health problems because it creates harmful gases that are released into the environment such as dioxins. This makes living near an incinerator a health risk equivalent to the risks of other types of pollution such as those from the paper mill and nuclear industries. Plasma arc waste treatment is seen as a safer and less polluting alternative. The thermal process used by a plasma arc system is known as pyrolysis or plasma gasification.

Using electric current to create an ionized gas known as a plasma, such a waste converter operates at a temperature of approximately 10,000° Fahrenheit (5,538° Celsius). Plasma production does not require the presence of oxygen, so there is little actual combustion of the waste. The decomposition of materials in a plasma arc waste converter occurs entirely through the application of heat and the gases produced are typically used as fuel to power the electrical generation of the plasma arc. The metals produced are salvaged as slag and sold to metal refineries or the construction industry, while the remaining inorganic materials are vitrified in a type of sterilized glass.

Another form of waste converter used as of 2011 is the biological converter for wastewater from municipalities and agriculture. These converters use fermentation processes to create ethanol and other types of organic fuels. Some of these waste conversion systems are also integrated into landfills to generate and capture methane gas as a form of fuel.

In Norway, a variation on biowaste conversion systems for residential food waste disposal has been developed as a better alternative than composting. It is faster than composting and reduces 90% of the original waste mass within 18 hours. In industries where large amounts of food waste are produced, such as restaurants and hotels, the system is seen as an efficient way to convert food waste into a sterilized type of organic fertilizer. The machinery is also of particular interest to nations such as the United Arab Emirates, which produce large quantities of organic waste but have little land available for landfill use. The 2010 Middle East Waste Summit (MEWS) presented the system to regional Arab states that were looking to adopt it, as well as other nations in the region such as Israel.

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