Union Carbide Corporation developed a partial oxidation process called the PUROX System for converting MSW to fuel gas and an inert slag (Fisher, Kasbohm, and Rivero, 1976). The process was scaled up in the mid 1970s from a pilot plant to a commercial, 181-t/day plant at Union Carbide’s facility in West Virginia. A 68-t/day plant was also built in Japan. The plant in West Virginia was operated successfully on MSW. One tonne of refuse required about 0.18 t of oxygen and produced 0.6 t of medium-energy gas with a higher heating value of about 14.5 MJ/m3 (n), 2 t of sterile aggregate residue, and 0.25 t of wastewater. Within the process, 0.03 t of oil was separated in the gas-cleaning train and recycled to the furnace for cracking into additional gas. A typical gas analysis was 40 mol % carbon monoxide, 23 mol % carbon dioxide, 5 mol % methane, 5 mol % C2+, 26 mol % hydrogen, and 1 mol % nitrogen. The energy balance expressed in terms of percent of the energy in the feedstock was a net 68% recovered in the product gas, 21% lost on conver­sion, and 11% used for in-plant electric power generation. The 181-t/day plant included front-end shredding and separation equipment for ferrous metal recovery, liquid separation equipment for recycling the condensed oil to the reactor, provision for removal of the slag from the hearth and quenching in a water bath, and treatment of the product gas by water scrubbing and electro­static precipitation. The reactor was a three-zoned, vertical shaft furnace operat­ing at about 50 cm of water. The RDF was fed to the top of the furnace through a gas seal and oxygen was injected at the bottom. The furnace was maintained essentially full of RDF which continually descends through the reactor. The oxygen in the hearth reacts with char to generate slagging temperatures to melt the glass and metals. Projections indicated that with a 1360-t/day plant composed of 181 to 317-t/day modular units, about 114 million L/year of methanol could be manufactured.