The thoroughly cleaned product gas fuels the advanced gas turbines of a combined-cycle power plant. It is today the most efficient means of converting urban refuse to electric power. By employing reductive gasification instead of oxidative combustion, the system prevents the formation of toxic dioxins and furans. The ocean dumping of sewage sludge has been outlawed by the US Environmental Protection Agency. Incineration poses the threat of polluting the atmosphere with dioxins and requires secure landfills for disposal of leachable incinerator ash.
Incineration is a less efficient method of recovering the energy content of such wastes.
By contrast, the Dynecology processes employ a closed system, which produces virtually no noxious stack emissions. The scrubbed product gas burns cleanly with the same flame temperature as natural gas. The glassy frit produced by quenching the molten slag, is non-leachable by EPA standards and thus eliminates a costly ash disposal problem. Instead, the frit may be utilized as a road building aggregate. This reactor is currently installed at the large German waste processing facility of SVZ at the town of Schwarze Pumpe.