Why Thermoselect® is different
Conventional waste-to-energy plants incinerate. Thermoselect® gasifies — driving mixed, unsorted feedstock through a high-temperature reactor until it breaks down into clean synthesis gas and inert slag. The difference isn't marketing language. It's a different chemical process, validated as gasification — not incineration — by the U.S. EPA.
The thermal journey of every input
That last step is the quiet differentiator. By collapsing the gas from over 1,200°C to under 70°C almost instantly, the process skips the window in which dioxins and furans would otherwise form — so environmental compliance is built into the physics, not bolted on with filters.
MSW, industrial waste, agro-industrial biomass, sewage and oil & gas sludge, e-waste — all of it goes in mixed. Eliminating the sorting and pre-treatment stage removes the slowest, most expensive part of a conventional plant, cutting both CAPEX and OPEX and simplifying logistics across the whole operation.
+1,000 TPD MIXED FEEDSTOCK · ZERO PRE-SORTING100% of what enters the plant leaves as something with value — fuel, hydrogen, vitrified slag, recovered metals, sulfur. There is no residual stream to bury.
The same syngas converts into power, ethanol, SAF, green marine fuel and hydrogen — while nitrogen from the air-separation unit is valorized for fertilizers, oil & gas, and data-center cooling.
No toxic emissions and no open-air burning. The process recovers its own outputs rather than releasing them, which is why it outperforms conventional WtE on environmental terms.
Over 30 years of commercial operation by independent operators — seven plants in Japan and the Fondotoce plant in Italy — and ranked #1 by AECOM/ARI for New York City and Los Angeles. Decades of third-party performance data, not a prototype.
Thermoselect® is validated by independent operators who commercialized it at scale — cited here as third-party proof, not IWT-built plants.
Operator reference: 7 commercial plants since 2001. WtE → electricity + ethanol. 25+ years at commercial scale.
Operator reference: Fondotoce plant — a 1990s deployment and one of the first large-scale projects.
In development — Atlanta, Georgia plus multiple projects in preliminary design.
IWT is the leading company commercializing Thermoselect® gasification in the U.S. waste management industry — a position established through the extensive RFP processes and independent technical evaluations the technology has undergone.
Adopted the technology for energy. Waste was simply the feedstock — the goal was power for their own plants, with the solid by-product feeding green-steel production.
The Fondotoce plant served primarily as a proof of concept for the process at commercial scale.
Approached the market from the supply side — waste itself. IWT was the first to direct the technology at landfills, solving the problem they create at its source.
It has worked for others in their private industries — but now IWT has made it work in the waste management industry.