World's largest waste-to-hydrogen plant

Hyundai Engineering's new facility is expected to be able to utilize organic waste and plastic waste to produce 30,000 tons of hydrogen per year.

Hyundai Engineering showcased its plants that convert organic waste into hydrogen and plastic waste into hydrogen at the H2 Mobility Energy Environment Technology (MEET) conference in Seoul from September 25 to 27. The two plants will produce more than 30,000 tons of hydrogen per year, making them the world's largest such facilities.

Hyundai Engineering's waste-to-hydrogen facility. (Photo: Kapil Kajal/Interesting Engineering)

Organic waste such as food waste, sewage sludge and livestock manure generate large amounts of methane, contributing to global warming. Waste-to-hydrogen technology not only helps to process this methane, preventing global warming, but also creates new industrial value by producing hydrogen - an environmentally friendly energy source.

First, organic waste is decomposed by microorganisms through anaerobic digestion. This process turns waste into biogas. Then, biogas is upgraded into biomethane, removing CO2 _and impurities. Finally, the biomethane is converted into hydrogen.

In addition to organic waste, Hyundai's new facility will also convert plastic waste into hydrogen . First, there is a "pre-processing" stage, removing impurities such as metal, sand, and paper to create waste plastic materials. Then, using a "melting" process developed by Hyundai Engineering, the waste plastic is heated and stirred to melt into a paste state. This process continues to remove small impurities.

During the gasification process, waste plastic is boiled into liquid form and fed into a gasifier with oxygen and steam to produce CO and hydrogen syngas using Shell technology. Finally, during the syngas purification stage, additional hydrogen is produced through CO conversion, removing impurities in the syngas and separating CO ₂ . As a result, the plant successfully produces high-purity hydrogen from plastic waste.

With 130,000 tons of plastic waste, the plant can produce about 24,000 tons of hydrogen per year in an environmentally friendly way. This amount of hydrogen has many applications such as fuel for the marine industry and for electric vehicles.