HYIELD’s partners have officially kicked off the project to build Europe’s first industrial-scale waste-to-hydrogen plant. The 15.5M€ project, co-financed by Horizon Europe’s Clean Hydrogen Partnership with a 10M€ grant, will run for the next 4 years and involves 16 partners from Spain, France, Luxembourg, Norway, Germany, and Switzerland.
The kick-off meeting, held on the 18th January 2024 in the HQ of WtEnergy Advanced Solutions located in Barcelona, was attended by all partners, along with project and financial officers Luca Feola and Antonio Requena Fernández from the Clean Hydrogen Partnership. The meeting was opened by Alvaro Sanchez, project manager at Magtel, project coordinator, with a presentation of the overall project objectives and workplan. This was followed by a contribution from Luca Feola and Antonio Requena Fernández, who spoke about Clean Hydrogen Partnership role and ambitions for the project within the Horizon Europe’s program. Later, Work Package leaders presented their objectives, tasks and upcoming activities for the next 6 months.
A website, with more information about the HYIELD project, will be launched in the coming months.
Green hydrogen, a product for the future
Green hydrogen is receiving increasing interest in Europe as a route to decarbonising many sectors, including energy intensive industry, aviation, and shipping. Whilst significant attention has been paid to the potential to produce green hydrogen from renewable electricity using electrolysis, very significant potential also lies in Europe’s waste streams. Europe produces around 300 million tons each year, with the potential to produce 30 million tons of green hydrogen, three times Europe’s 2030 target for green hydrogen production. Green hydrogen produced from waste and biomass has been proven extensively at laboratory and pilot scale and several large-scale projects are now under development around the world. The Clean Hydrogen Partnership believes waste-to-hydrogen could offer green hydrogen at lower costs (Levelized Cost of Hydrogen (LCOH)), potentially below 3€/kg, compared with around 5-6€/kg for electrolysis.
The title of HYIELD is “A novel multi-stage steam gasification and syngas purification demonstration plant for waste to hydrogen conversion”. The project aims to build Europe’s first large-scale waste-to-hydrogen demonstration plant that will produce over 400 tonnes of green hydrogen during the project. Our ambition is to develop a robust and efficiency solution that will pave the way for commercial scale-up and replication across Europe, enabling the closure of landfills and production of low-cost green hydrogen in relevant volumes to help decarbonise sectors such as shipping and heavy industry.
The demonstration plant will utilise WtEnergy Advanced Solutions’ CleanTech gasification technology and H2Site membrane separation reactor and will be implemented a CEMEX cement factory in Spain, where the green hydrogen will be utilised in cement production.
The HYIELD consortium comprises 3 research centres, 4 technology developers, 5 industrial end-users, 1 waste manager and 2 specialists. The consortium comprises expertise in waste management, hydrogen, materials science, thermo-chemical process engineering and technology scale-up. Under the coordination of MAGTEL, the HYIELD project consortium is formed by other Spanish partners: WTENERGY ADVANCED SOLUTIONS, H2SITE, CEMEX, VEOLIA, ENAGAS, EURECAT, CETAQUA, INVENIAM GROUP, INSTITUTO DE CARBOQUÍMICA DEL CSIC and LA FARGA; along with MINCATEC ENERGY (France), SINTEF (Norway), ARISTENG (Luxembourg), ARCELORMITTAL (Germany) and SYNHELION (Switzerland).
HYIELD project has been approved for funding in response to the Horizon Europe call “Waste to Hydrogen demonstration plant (HORIZON-JTI-CLEANH2-2023-01-05)”. The call is led by the Clean Hydrogen Partnership (Clean Hydrogen JU), the body that oversees EU funding and R&I activities related to hydrogen, with the objective of supporting the EU Green Deal and Hydrogen Strategy.
