On a recent wintry morning in Hudson, N.Y., 125 miles north of Manhattan, Paul Eckhoff is demonstrating a device that turns hazardous medical waste into relatively harmless gases. A restless 77-year-old entrepreneur, Eckhoff has spent the last three years developing a plasma-torch vaporizer, in the hopes of selling hospitals an environmentally safe way to dispose of infectious waste. The plasma in question has nothing to do with blood. It's a high-temperature gas, brighter than a welder's flame, created when argon, then air, is fed through a tiny gap between two copper electrodes. These electrodes are charged with a 300-kilowatt burst of energy from the nearby Chittenden Falls Hydroelectric Plant—great enough to power 150 homes. The plasma passes into a furnace, now at a scorching 10,000 degrees.
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