New technology of organic waste gasification

A novel environmentally friendly technology for gasification of organic wastes is proposed and demonstrated. The technology is referred to as the pulsed detonation (PD) gun technology and has several attractive features as (i) it allows atmospheric pressure operation at very high gasification temperatures obtained by detonating, e.g., natural gas as a starting fuel and a part of produced syngas (10%-20%) as a process fuel in a mixture with oxygen and steam, while the energy consumption for detonation ignition is negligible; (ii) it can potentially ensure the complete conversion of gas, liquid, and solid wastes into useful products—syngas, consisting exclusively of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, fine particles of mineral residues, consisting of safe simple oxides, as well as aqueous solutions of simple acids like HCl, HF, H2S, etc., and ammonia NH3; (iii) it can be implemented using conventional structural materials; (iv) it can be scaled-up by applying multiple PD guns of the same power or PD guns of higher power designed based on the well-known scaling laws inherent in detonations; and (v) it is economically beneficial, as the ideal energy gain for syngas production from, e. g., dry wood sawdust is above 4.