Plasma gasification as an alternative energy-from-waste (EFW) technology for the circular economy: An environmental review

This paper provides a comprehensive review of the environmental impact of plasma gasification technology, and assesses its merits as a sustainable technology fitting within waste management strategies for the circular economy transition. It reviews prior published work on conventional and plasma gasification through an envi-ronmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) lens, extracting each LCA's impact categories for a systematic review by comparing each LCA's relative difference. Such review method has not been applied for gasification technology before. From the reviewed LCA, it is found that plasma gasification, given its simultaneous energy and materials recovery feature, has more environmental benefits over landfilling and incineration. For example, in terms of global warming potential, 67% and 61% of the reviewed LCA work agrees that plasma gasification is more environmentally sound when compared to landfilling and incineration, respectively. For conventional (non -plasma) gasification, 89% of the reviewed-LCA find it to have lower global warming impact than landfilling; however, only half (56%) of the reviewed LCA find conventional gasification to be beneficial over incineration for the same impact categories. This review has demonstrated the environmental superiority of plasma gasifi-cation over other Energy-from-Waste (EFW) technologies, and has presented its alignment with the circular economy principle of circulating products and materials at their highest value with a minimal environmental impact.