74 year old Joseph Longo, founder and CEO of Startech Environmental Corporation, is fast becoming known as “The Prophet of Garbage” because he has developed a Plasma Converter that can turn the world’s most dangerous and toxic waste into clean usable energy.

This promising new technology straight out of Star Trek holds out the promise of making landfills and other troublesome toxic storage sites a thing of the past and with further research and development become a viable alternative energy source for homes, transportation and space travel.

Startech’s trash converter uses superheated plasma to reduce garbage to its molecuar components. Longo’s multimillion dollar technological marvel dubbed the “Plasma Converter” has taken almost 20 years to design and build and can fit easily within a space the size of a two-car garage. Yet, it has the capability to consume almost any kind of waste or toxic product through a process called plasma gasification.

This annilhilation process is described like something similar to the the big bang, only in reverse in that you get nothing from something, instead of something out of nothing. Inside a sealed vessel made of stainless steel and filled with a stable gasâ€”either pure nitrogen or, as in this case, ordinary airâ€”a 650-volt current passing between two electrodes rips electrons from the air, converting the gas into plasma. Current flows continuously through this newly formed plasma, , creating a field of extremely intense energy very much like lightning. The radiant energy of the plasma arc is so powerful, it disintegrates trash into its constituent elements by tearing apart molecular bonds.

The by-products are an obsidian-like glass used as a raw material for numerous applications, including bathroom tiles and high-strength asphalt, and a synthesis gas, or â€œsyngasâ€â€”a mixture of primarily hydrogen and carbon monoxide that can be converted into a variety of marketable fuels, including ethanol, natural gas and hydrogen. The only type of waste that it cannot break down is nuclear waste since the radiation is already in its natural atomic state.

To learn more about this new technology go to Popular Science Magazine online POPSCI.com and read Michael Behar’s fascinating article on the subject. The potential for this is staggering in its scope.

[Click on the image for a larger view of the Plasma Converter]