Plastic Waste to Hydrogen: The Truth About Chemical Recycling

Peel NRE, a subsidiary of Peel L&P in the United Kingdom, is constructing a new $24 million plant in West Dunbartonshire, Scotland, to convert plastic waste into hydrogen. The company claims it will use cutting-edge technology to create a local source of sustainable hydrogen from non-recyclable plastics that would otherwise be destined for landfill, incineration, or export. The hydrogen will then be used to power automobiles, buses, and heavy trucks. On the site of the plant, there are plans to construct a hydrogen refueling station.

The facility will address the dual challenge of addressing our problem of plastic while also producing hydrogen, sustainable fuel for future generations, according to Richard Barker, development director at Peel NRE. While the focus must remain on removing plastic from society, end-of-life plastics must still be managed, according to Barker. The £20 million plants will be critical in making the most of non-recyclable materials, with the hydrogen produced helping to reduce carbon emissions from vehicles.

This facility employs Powerhouse Energy Group's Distributed Modular Generation technology, which is a proprietary advanced thermal conversion technology for producing electricity and hydrogen from waste plastics.

The DMG process, according to Powerhouse Energy Group, is a sub-stoichiometric, endothermic gasification process. The waste plastics are subjected to a significant amount of heat. This causes them to break down into their constituent molecules, which then turn into energy-rich syngas through a series of endothermic chemical reactions.

Plastic Waste to Hydrogen

A typical plant will process 40 tonnes of plastic waste per day and produce up to 2 tonnes or 2000 kilograms of hydrogen in the same time period, according to the company. For every tonne of feedstock, this equates to about 50 kg of H2.

The plant is powered by plastic, which is a solid fossil fuel. To make the syngas, they use pyrolysis, which involves heating plastic to extremely high temperatures and then converting it to hydrogen and CO2.

Syngas is a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen produced by steam reforming methane in natural gas as part of the process of generating hydrogen for ammonia production.

Chemical recycling's goal is to eliminate plastic waste, in this case by converting 40 tons of plastic waste into 2 tons of hydrogen. However, this process produces a significant amount of CO2.

Read also: Scientists in Fight Against Plastic Waste: Discovery of a New Enzyme Can Help in Fight Against Plastic Pollution 

The Truth about Chemical Recycling

The Hydrogen Science Coalition's Paul Martin clarified that gasifying plastic to make syngas and dumping CO2 into the atmosphere is required. Plastic, like any fuel derived from it or its energy content, is a fossil fuel, and waste plastic can be easily and permanently sequestered by burying it. He also told Treehugger that the ash residue would be a problem. Any amount of fluoropolymers, PVC, or brominated fire retardants in the feed plastic, whether burned, pyrolyzed, or gasified, will result in nastiness.

This is the problem with chemical recycling, according to Lloyd Alter of Treehugger, and why it is no different than traditional recycling. He explains that it's all designed to make people feel good about buying disposable plastic packaging.

Alter ends his piece by emphasizing that the only realistic way to eliminate plastic waste is to stop producing it in the first place.

Related article: Scientists Are Turning Plastic Wastes Into Efficient Carbon Capturing Materials