Cheshire West & Chester Council gave Peel Environmental (part of Peel L&P) and Waste2Tricity unanimous planning consent for the UK’s first waste plastic to hydrogen facility. The plant – which will be built at the 54-hectare Protos site near Ellesmere Port – will feature ground-breaking technology that has never been used before in the UK.
Myles Kitcher, Managing Director at Peel Environmental, said:
The technology has been proven at Thornton Science Park and will now be commercialized at Protos, before being rolled out across the UK. This is hugely significant for Cheshire and the wider region, demonstrating how we’re rising to the challenge of being the UK’s first low carbon industrial cluster and setting a standard for others to follow.
John Hall, Waste2Tricity said:
Securing consent for our first facility in the UK is a huge step forward and we’re delighted that Cheshire West & Chester Council has got behind the project. Working with Peel Environmental, we have plans to roll out the technology across the UK.
It will be the first of as many as eleven facilities planned for construction across the nation – altogether representing over £130m worth of investments. The development of the first facility is valued at £7m and will create 14 full-time permanent jobs at Protos, as well as more than 100 jobs during fabrication and construction in the North West. Construction is set to begin in Autumn following planning consent, with the plant scheduled to be operational in 2021.
The facility will transform how plastic waste is handled in the region. It promises to treat up to 35 tons of unrecyclable plastics daily – using it to produce a local source of hydrogen for clean fuel for heavy goods vehicles, buses, and cars. Using hydrogen instead of fossil fuels for transportation will help reduce air pollution and improve the region’s air quality.
The facility would also generate electricity that could be provided to commercial users via a microgrid at Protos. And, they are looking into creating a closed-loop system where plastics are created on-site and the scraps can be used to produce hydrogen.
The pioneering technology being used is called DMG® (Distributed Modular Generation), and PowerHouse Energy Group developed it. The DMG process involves filling a sealed chamber with plastic waste and heating it to extremely high temperatures, this removes carbon and converts the remaining solid material into syngas (synthetic gas). The syngas is then moved to another chamber, where it is modulated to generate hydrogen that is a road-fuel-quality grade.
PowerHouse Energy’s chief executive David Ryan said:
Our technology is a sustainable solution for dealing with plastics that would otherwise end up in landfills, and because we’re generating hydrogen it’s much more efficient than other energy-from-waste processes.
The North West has a bid to become the UK’s first low carbon cluster by 2030, and this project is just one part of that ambition. It is also part of Peel L&P’s sustainability pledge and dedication to helping the UK reach net-zero emissions.
Ged Barlow, Chair of the Cheshire Energy Hub:
The UK is going to require plenty of innovation if it is to meet challenging net-zero targets. Projects like this show how in the North West we’re leading the way and it’s great to see yet another UK first project taking place within the Energy Innovation District. The technology is truly innovative and forms part of our plans to deliver local low carbon energy sources.
In addition to fabricating zero-carbon fuel, Peel L&P has committed to eliminating all single-use plastics across the business within the next five years. And it’s the first property company to achieve Net Zero Carbon status using the UK Green Building Council’s 2019 definition for buildings in the UK.
