The Gasplasma (R) process developed by APP is an advanced thermal conversion (ATC) technology which has been developed for the treatment of household and trade wastes and has also been successfully applied to the handling of wastes derived from landfill and would be capable of achieving effective energy conversion when utilised as an integrated part of the Enhanced Landfill Mining (ELFM) concept. The core Gasplasma (R) technology comprises a two-stage thermal treatment system firstly, a fluidizing bed gasifier which converts the wastes to a crude syngas using oxy-steam and, secondly, a plasma converter that efficiently cracks problematic tars in the raw syngas to produce a reformed and clean syngas suitable for generating electrical power in gas engines and also recovering an environmentally stable vitrified product for use as a secondary aggregate material. The utilization of oxy-steam as a gasifying agent greatly reduces the syngas volume compared to other ATC processes and incineration and hence reduces the cost of the gas cleaning system while improving the efficiency of the process. By adopting this two-stage approach, high energy conversion (74-90%) and carbon conversion (95 +/- 1.6%) efficiencies were achieved with the Gasplasma (R) plant that compare favourably with published efficiencies data. The calculated net exportable power generation efficiency for a commercial scale plant is significantly in excess of 25%. This compares well with the published figures of 17.7-23% for fluidized bed technologies processing MSW. (C) 2011 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.