Plasma Gasification Melting is a promising technology for solid waste treatment. In this work, a thermodynamic analysis has been conducted to evaluate the advantages and limitations of the PGM technology. According to the characteristics of the PGM, the whole process was divided into four sections such as drying, pyrolysis, char gasification and inorganics melting. The energy and exergy in each section has been calculated. According to different usage of syngas, two kinds of energy and exergy efficiencies are defined. The results show that the PGM process produces a tar-rich syngas. When considering the raw syngas (syngas with tar), the energy and exergy efficiency of PGM process is very high. The effects of operating conditions on the thermodynamic performance of the PGM process have been analyzed. Considering the energy and exergy of clean syngas, it is beneficial to increase sensible heat input to the PGM system. However, high sensible heat input or high steam injection is not suggested when considering the energy and exergy efficiency of raw syngas. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.