Students call attention to plasma conversion technology

The FIRST program strives to be more than just an after school activity for youth around the world. It provides career experience to engineering hopefuls and even presents solutions to real-world issues, from the minds of middle and high school students.

While participating in the FIRST Lego League competition last year, students from Belknap Middle School in Lockport, NY had the chance to present their case for alternative energy sources that they thought would be most beneficial to their community in the form of a skit. The students acted out a scene set in a Lockport plasma conversion facility in 2057 that was based on their own consideration and research.

Impressed by the students’ proposal, Town of Lockport Supervisor Marc Smith has looked into Startech Plasma Converter systems, which provide technology that converts waste into fuel, as a possible waste solution for the community.

Startech’s Plasma Converters use ionized plasma as an electrical conductor that produces an intense energy transfer that breaks waste down to its elemental components. In this state, what was formerly waste can create metals and silicates, and a plasma converted gas that can be used as fuel for electrical generation, plant heating and cooling, producing fresh water, cell electricity and producing chemicals for plastics.

The system, the brainchild of New York native Joseph Longo, not only provides a more efficient waste removal system, it can produce commodities by recycling even hazardous wastes. Potential products of the system include electricity, steam energy, and hydrogen.

Currently, plasma conversion facilities are being constructed in Michigan and at Port St. Lucie, Fla., according to the Lockport Union-Sun and Journal, and plans are being made for another on Long Island, according to Popular Science.

The Belknap team won an award for creative presentation last December at the FIRST Lego Robotics regional competition. In its tenth year the FIRST Lego League challenges kids ages 9 to 14 to solve real-world problems using the Lego Mindstorms NXT robotics platform. More than 10,600 teams of ten children participated in the 2007 Power Puzzle Challenge.