Green Hydrogen and Renewable Natural Gas from Waste in a Circular Economy: Producing Low-Cost Hydrogen and Rng with a Negative CO2 Footprint from Minimally Prepared Waste.

In this presentation the author describes a new approach to making green hydrogen today at less than half the cost of electrolysis and renewable natural gas at low cost, all with a low or negative CO₂ footprint. This is done by converting minimally prepared MSW, RDF, biomass, ICI, or C&D waste to a clean syngas tailored to end use, then using proven industrial processes to produce renewable hydrogen or RNG from the syngas. The negative carbon footprint results from avoiding the anaerobic decomposition of waste in landfills.

To make hydrogen, waste is first converted to syngas using OMNI’s GPRS^TM. The syngas is then converted to hydrogen and CO₂ using a sour gas shift reactor designed and supplied by KP Engineering. Each unit will produce approximately 5000 tonnes/year of hydrogen.

The conference presentation will also describe a hybrid approach, that of combining the OMNI unit with electrolysis. In this scheme, oxygen from electrolysis is used directly in the OMNI unit, and waste heat from the OMNI unit increases the efficiency of the electrolyser. The hybrid system combines the best of both alternatives for a flexible, low-cost solution that can provide baseload hydrogen from the GPRS^TM and peaking operation from the electrolyser, with significantly better economics than the electrolyser alone.

RNG is made by hydrogenation of the gas using mature industrial processes and/or in conjunction with electrolysis, using the oxygen for the gasifier and the hydrogen to adjust the H₂:CO ratio.

The process guarantee is backed by an insurance wrap and supported by data from over a decade of demonstration at a commercial scale. Delivery is de-risked by delivery in 200 tpd shop assembled modular units and choices made to ensure high availability.