Start-up Solena Group is to build a facility in California for making green hydrogen from wastepaper stocks.
The plant, which will be hosted and co-owned by the City of Lancaster, will feature gasification technology applied to recycled waste to produce the gas, being commercialised by Solena subsidiary SGH2.
SGH2 expects to start constructing the facility in the first quarter of next year with commissioning in the fourth quarter of 2022 and full operations in early 2023.
The Lancaster plant output will be used at hydrogen refuelling stations across California for both light- and heavy-duty fuel cell vehicles.
Unlike other green hydrogen production methods that depend on variable solar or wind energy, SGH2’s technology relies on a “constant, year-round” stream of recycled waste feedstocks, and therefore can produce hydrogen at scale “more reliably”, the company said.
The plant will produce 11,000kg of green hydrogen daily when operational and will process 42,000 tonnes of recycled paper waste annually.
SGH2 said green hydrogen produced by its process is five to seven times cheaper than that made from electrolysis using renewable electricity and is competitive with hydrogen produced from fossil fuels like natural gas.
The City of Lancaster will supply guaranteed feedstock of recyclables, and will save between $50( €45) to $75 per tonne in landfilling and landfill space costs.
Lancaster mayor Rex Parris said: “As the world, and our city, cope with the coronavirus crisis, we are looking for ways to ensure a better future. We know a circular economy with renewable energy is the path, and we have positioned ourselves to be the alternative energy capital of the world.
“That’s why our partnership with SGH2 is so important.
“This is game-changing technology. It not only solves our air quality and climate challenges by producing pollution-free hydrogen. It also solves our plastics and waste problems by turning them into green hydrogen, and does it cleaner and at costs far lower than any other green hydrogen producer.”
SGH2’s proprietary technology gasifies any kind of waste – from plastic to paper and from tires to textiles – to make hydrogen.
A consortium of leading global companies and top institutions have joined with SGH2 and the City of Lancaster to develop and implement the Lancaster project, including Fluor, Berkeley Lab, UC Berkeley, Thermosolv, Integrity Engineers, Millenium, HyetHydrogen, and Hexagon.
Fluor will provide front-end engineering and design for the Lancaster facility.
SGH2 will provide a complete performance guarantee of the Lancaster plant by issuing a total output guarantee of hydrogen production per year, underwritten by the largest reinsurance company in the world.
SGH2’s patented Solena Plasma Enhanced Gasification (SPEG) technology gasifies biogenic waste materials, and uses no externally sourced energy. Berkeley Lab performed a preliminary lifecycle carbon analysis, which found that for every tonne of hydrogen produced, SPEG technology reduces emissions by 23 to 31 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, avoiding 13 to 19 tonnes of carbon dioxide per tonne than “any other green hydrogen process”, said the company.
SGH2 is in negotiations to launch similar projects in France, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, Greece, Japan, South Korea, Poland, Turkey, Russia, China, Brazil, Malaysia and Australia.
The company’s stacked modular design is built for “rapid scale and linear distributed expansion and lower capital costs”.
“Hydrogen is the emerging solution for hard-to-decarbonise sectors like the cement industry,” said Lawrie Evans, a technical expert in the cement industry, and former director of the world’s largest cement company, LafargeHolcim.
“SGH2’s solution – to produce green hydrogen and bio-syngas from the gasification of biomass and biogenic waste using its SPEG process – can be a cost competitive solution to provide the high quality heat required in our industry, and replace or reduce the usage of coal and coke,” Evans added.