Lecture to address transforming garbage into fuel and useable building products, eliminating landfills

The Building Technologies Club of DeKalb Technical College and the Computing and Engineering Club of Georgia Perimeter College will present a lecture, "Plasma Arc Technology Applications," on Thursday, June 2, 2011, 6-7:30 p.m., at The Conference Center of DeKalb Technical College-Clarkston Campus, located at 495 N. Indian Creek Drive, Clarkston, Ga. 30021. The program is the fifth event of the colleges’ Joint Lecture Series.

Guest lecturer will be Dr. Louis J. Circeo, principal research scientist at Applied Plasma Arc Technologies, LLC, a Georgia Institute of Technology Advanced Technology Development Center company in Atlanta. Circeo will discuss his research in plasma arch technology and his work with Applied Arc Technologies.

Plasma arc technology utilizes "artificial lighting" to reduce municipal waste into synthetic gas and a glass-like material that can be used on construction projects. This eliminates the need for landfills, and instead turns everyday garbage into fuel and usable building products. Scientific American magazine dubbed the technology one of 20 "world changing ideas" that could build a cleaner, healthier, smarter world.

A leading world authority on plasma technology, Circeo is the former director of plasma research in the Electro-Optical Systems Laboratory at Georgia Tech. He is a graduate of West Point and holds a doctorate in civil engineering from Iowa State University. He has extensive research and development experience relating to construction and environmental engineering, and is a registered professional engineer. Circeo arrived at Georgia Tech after a full career with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He has been involved with plasma arc technology since 1971, and holds five U.S. patents relating to plasma technology applications. He established the plasma-applications research program at Georgia Tech in 1990.

The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information or to register, call DeKalb Tech Industrial Technologies instructor Brian Lovell at (404) 297-9522, ext. 1265, or e-mail lovellb@dekalbtech.edu.

DeKalb Technical College, a unit of the Technical College System of Georgia, promotes a student-centered environment for lifelong learning and development, encompassing academic and technical education for employment in a global community. The college has nine centers of learning in DeKalb, Newton, Rockdale, and Morgan counties. DeKalb Technical College currently has more than 5,000 students enrolled in diploma or degree programs and more than 9,000 in adult education classes. Academic and technical programs at DeKalb Tech cover more than 120 different occupations. For more information, visit our website at www.dekalbtech.edu.