Great podcast, however, if you're wondering why nobody has heard of these guys perhaps it's because you never told us the actual name of the company! Do they have a website? Why don't they!? (if they don't). Where can I go to get more info about this thing so I can help spread the word?

Hi, Joe. The company is called StarTech. Sorry for the omission—it's been added to the blog post now.

Wow! Thanks for the quick response. They have a very thorough web site and I'm very impressed with their technology. I would love it if my town were to adopt this technology.

Interesting, except, not cost effective and the amount of energy that is used making one of those units just might, might be more than the amount the unit generates. So it might be a net loss of energy. It might be a net contributer to CO2. It might be harmful to the environment.

Yes but you are forgeting that them main point of themachine is not to generate power but to get rid of waste. So if you think of all those greate big land fills wasting space and polouting the enviroment this seems like a brilliant option.

Really old landfills pollute the environment. Newer ones don't and actually make methane which is then converted to electricity. When the new ones are full, they are covered and built upon with no evidence of negative consequences.

Sure LJM, but what about hazardous material? The Plasma Converter can convert 300 barrels of hazardous hospital waste into just 1 barrel of harmless silicate. When converting high-energy feedstock such as plastics and tires, a unit of material that requires 1kw to process can produce up to 2.5kw of useable electricy. That means that this thing can power itself while it rids the earth of old diapers, Mac IIs, and crap(literally). And last but definately not least, this is a green source of hydrogen. Maybe someday soon we will be able to convert our trash into fuel for our cars!

There is no way that this can have positive energy flow. Plasma torches take a large amount of electrical current (Kilowatts) and the conversion of combustible gas back into electrical energy is at best 70-80% efficient.
Even if you take away the claim of positive energy flow. Disposing of waste this way will be expensive and would only be justified by only the most dangerous (read toxic) of waste chemicals.
I would like to see a thermaldynamic analysis of this process done by a impartial 3rd party before I would invest in this scheme.

Sounds like an early iteration of the Mr. Fusion device of "Back to the Future" fame. Pretty cool idea

I knew the Flux Capacitor was real .........