Startech Environmental Demonstrates Hydrogen Vehicle - Story Includes Hydrogen Tutorial
WILTON, Conn., July 10 Startech Environmental Corp. , the world leader in plasma waste
remediation and recycling technology, announced today that it has demonstrated
the successful operation of its hydrogen vehicle by driving it around Bristol,
Connecticut, the location of the Company's Demonstration and Training Center
(the Center). The Center houses an operating industrial-sized Plasma
Converter(TM) system and the new StarCell(TM) unit. The vehicle is a white
Ford pickup truck with a 4-cylinder engine and a standard transmission.
Shell Hydrogen and Sunline Transit Agency logos are prominently displayed
on the truck along with the names of industrial, governmental and educational
organizations who are also playing a leading role in advancing hydrogen
vehicle transportation. Sunline Transit Agency is a world leader in
commercializing hydrogen fuel technologies and is a recognized force in the
development of low-cost, pollution-free transportation. Shell Hydrogen is a
global business of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group of companies. Shell Hydrogen
develops business opportunities and provides energy solutions to promote a
hydrogen reliant fuel economy.
Startech President, Joseph Longo, said, "This is a major step that will
help forward the expansion of our worldwide marketing program. We plan to use
the truck at our Center to show how the hydrogen produced from safely
processing many kinds of waste in our Plasma Converter system can be used as
the fuel for the truck. It is powered by a direct-use hydrogen engine. In
fact, much like an ordinary car, there is a reciprocal engine under the hood
that produces the horsepower through the transmission to propel the car, and
also produces the electricity through the generator to supply all the car's
electrical systems.
This is not a fuel-cell/electric motor vehicle, nor is it
a hybrid engine. The car uses no other fuel but hydrogen. It gets good
mileage and is very easy to fill. While it's quite impressive, we want to
keep it simple and straightforward. This is about hydrogen power from trash;
there will be more on this to come.
When you consider the fact that hydrogen is one of the most abundant
materials in the world, and that trash is one of the most abundant renewable
resources in the world, and further, that their affordable future joining
through the Startech system can help solve some of the environmental and
energy problems facing the world, it seems to me that this is a most elegant
and exquisite solution to those problems, and a solution in perfect harmony
with mother-nature. One of our jobs is to get people to really understand
this. They will."
After driving the truck, Karl Hale, VP of Engineering, said, "It's great.
It has the same pep and feel I'd expect from a car that uses gasoline. But,
unlike a gasoline engine, there was no smoke or smell coming out of the
exhaust even when starting and accelerating, and even when I drove it up a
hill. As a matter of fact, the only thing you could see coming out the
exhaust were a few drops of fresh water."
How the Converter works
The Plasma Converter system is a process whereby waste materials
continuously fed into the system are safely and economically destroyed,
reformed and recovered by the Company's molecular dissociation and closed-loop
elemental recycling process. The principal Plasma Converter achievement is
that it safely and irreversibly destroys nonhazardous, hazardous and toxic
wastes, in all their forms, no matter how lethal, at low cost and without any
harmful emissions or residues, and it does this safer than prevailing
environmental standards. While hazardous waste destruction is Startech's main
business, the ability to recover valuable commodity products is becoming more
important to its customers every day.
One of the principal products recovered
is Plasma Converted Gas(TM) (PCG(TM)) a clean synthesis gas that has many
commercial uses particularly as a clean fuel.
What is Plasma?
Plasma is a gas (air) that the Converter ionizes so that it becomes an
extremely effective electrical conductor. This allows the Converter to
produce a lightning-like arc of electricity that is the source of an intense
amount of energy transferred to the waste by radiation. The interior
temperature of the lightning arc in the plasma plume within the vessel can be
as high as 30,000 degrees Fahrenheit; three times hotter than the surface of
the sun. When waste materials are subjected to the intensity of that energy
within the vessel, the excitation of the molecular bonds is so great that the
waste materials' molecules break apart into their elemental components (the
atoms). It is the absorption of this energy by the waste materials that
forces elemental dissociation resulting in the complete and total destruction
of the waste.
What is Plasma Converted Gas (PCG)?
PCG is a manufactured synthesis gas produced from processing waste in the
Converter vessel that can be used as a clean fuel and as a chemical feed stock
to make many hydrocarbon-based products including methanol, an important
alternative fuel. PCG is not a molecule such as methane. PCG is a gas
mixture rich in hydrogen. That hydrogen can be separated and captured for use
by StarCell(TM). StarCell Hydrogen (TM) is a valuable, commercial-grade
hydrogen that can be used in fuel cells and in direct-use hydrogen engines to
produce electric power for domestic and industrial use, and also for
transportation such as in the hydrogen vehicle mentioned earlier.
What is StarCell?
StarCell is the Company's new patented hydrogen selective membrane system
that separates hydrogen from PCG. Once the hydrogen is removed for use, the
remaining carbon-based component of the PCG syngas can still be used as a
valuable fuel or chemical feed stock. StarCell is not a fuel cell; it is a
ceramic membrane filtration system.
Joseph Longo said, "In many respects hydrogen is safer than gasoline.
But, even though hydrogen is so abundant in the universe, it is not readily
accessible. Expensive and sophisticated chemical-industry processes must be
used to extract it. Nearly all of the hydrogen produced today is made from
fossil fuels. These fossil fuel molecules are 'reformed' in a complex
thermo-chemical process consisting of many steps. This expensive reformation
process is exactly what our Plasma Converter does in destroying most wastes.
This gives us a special market advantage in the production of hydrogen. In
other words, we get the reformation for less than nothing, and StarCell does
the rest."
Why hydrogen?
Longo also said, "The increasing importance of alternative energy sources,
and the world's interest in the Hydrogen Economy accelerated our development
of StarCell and StarCell Hydrogen. Hydrogen is used in many industrial
processes to make products we use every day. Theses products include cooking
oils, peanut butter, soap, insulation, metals, drugs, vitamins, adhesives,
cosmetics, ammonia, fuels, plastics and so on.
Pound-for-pound, hydrogen packs more energy punch than all the other
fuels. It has four times more energy than coal, three times more energy than
fuel oil, and two and a half times as much as natural gas. When used as a
fuel, hydrogen produces only clean water vapor with no greenhouse gases. It
is a perfectly pristine fuel."
Senior VP, Kevin Black, said, "We are creating a unique worldwide
marketing program surrounding these new advances. Unlike many of the
alternative fuel and energy projects that people are talking about these days,
we have created a program that is not based on hope or future possibility.
Hydrogen engines for transportation and for the production of electric power
for homes and industries are here now. Hydrogen will help reduce our future
reliance on fossil fuels, and we believe StarCell Hydrogen will play an
important role in that future. Low cost hydrogen is the key.
Our Startech system is the best waste processing technology on the market.
Our customers can make money on the front-end processing waste, and on the
back-end using or selling the recovered commodities. Our customers make money
end-to-end.
We are all very excited about using the car to get people to understand
and appreciate the fact that we are doing now what others are talking about
doing in the future."
About Startech Environmental Corp:
Startech is an environmental equipment company whose Plasma Converter is
essentially an electrochemical system that, while safely destroying wastes,
even hazardous wastes, converts those materials into useful and valuable
commodity products. It does this economically, efficiently, with relatively
few moving parts, and without combustion. The prime mover in the Plasma
Converter process is the chemical dissociation (decomposition) of the feed
materials after which their elemental components (atoms) are reformed into
useful commodities. The United States Environmental Protection Agency has
designated materials, even if they may have once been regarded as wastes, or
hazardous wastes, undergoing such a recycling process, no longer as wastes,
but as "feedstocks."
Safe Harbor for Forward-Looking Statements:
This press release contains forward-looking statements, including
statements regarding the Company's plans and expectations regarding the
development and commercialization of its Plasma Converter(TM) technology. All
forward-looking statements are subject to risk and uncertainties that could
cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Factors that
could cause such a difference include, without limitation, general risks
associated with product development, manufacturing, rapid technological change
and competition as well as other risks set forth in the Company's filings with
the Securities and Exchange Commission. The forward-looking statements
contained herein speak only as of the date of this press release. The Company
expressly disclaims any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any
updates or revisions to any such statement to reflect any change in the
Company's expectations or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on
which any such statement is based.
For further information, contact Robert L. DeRochie, VP of Investor
Relations, or see the Startech web page: http://www.startech.net