Peel Environmental has submitted a planning application to build a £7 million hydrogen production facility at its Protos industrial hub near Ellesmere Port in Cheshire.
The plant would convert up to 35 tonnes of unrecyclable plastic each day into hydrogen for road vehicles. It would also generate electricity for fellow occupants of the Protos hub, which would be supplied directly through a microgrid.
Peel Environmental has partnered with PowerHouse Energy and Waste2Tricity to develop the project. The facility would be the first in the UK to use the former’s Distributed Modular Generation gasification technology.
Myles Kitcher from Peel Environmental said: “This is a great step forward towards delivering the first of many waste plastic to hydrogen facilities across the UK. There is huge potential for hydrogen to replace fossil fuels in our transport system.
He continued: “Using waste plastic to generate a local source of hydrogen could not only help to reduce our reliance on landfill but improve local air quality with a clean and low-cost fuel for buses, heavy goods vehicles and cars.”
Waste2Tricity managing director John Hall commented: “We are excited to have submitted plans for this plant – the first in a series of developments that have the capability to make the North West a leader in moving towards clean energy and to help in achieving the government’s target of net zero emissions by 2050.”
The project forms part of plans to create the UK’s first low-carbon industrial cluster in the north west of England by 2030.
The Protos hub is already the location of a 21.5MW biomass power station which entered commercial operation in March.