RWE and partners John Cockerill are to jointly build a testing facility in Germany which will optimize a key stage in the process of turning household waste into hydrogen. The facility, called a torrefaction plant, will be built at RWE’s innovation centre in Niederaußem in Germany and will test the production of feedstock pellets made from waste, to be used in the company’s innovative FUREC waste-to-hydrogen initiative. RWE is going to invest EUR 3 million in the pilot plant, which is scheduled to be operational in July 2022. At the heart of the new plant in Niederaußem is the NESA Multi-Hearth furnace, a technology supplied by John Cockerill Environment. In this furnace, waste pellets will be roasted (torrefied) in such a way that they can be ground into dust and converted into hydrogen and CO2 in a later thermal process under the exclusion of air. The pilot plant is being built at the RWE Innovation Centre in Niederaußem because the company already has the technology for generating and storing gases there. The facility is the next step in the development of RWE's FUREC project (Fuse Reuse Recycle) – a large-scale chemical recycling plant at the Chemelot industrial park in Limburg, in the Netherlands.There, RWE plans to produce circular and green hydrogen and CO2 for the chemical industry from municipal waste. In the process, FUREC will recycle the hydrogen and CO2 that normally escape into the atmosphere when waste is incinerated or landfilled. Because much of the waste used as feedstock will be of organic origin (e.g., textiles, paper), 50% of the hydrogen recycled in this way will be green. The rest is considered circular hydrogen because it is recovered from plastic waste and used industrially. In this way, it remains in the material cycle.
RWE and partners John Cockerill are to jointly build a testing facility in Germany which will optimize a key stage in the process of turning household waste into hydrogen. The facility, called a torrefaction plant, will be built at RWE’s innovation centre in Niederaußem in Germany and will test the production of feedstock pellets made from waste, to be used in the company’s innovative FUREC waste-to-hydrogen initiative. RWE is going to invest EUR 3 million in the pilot plant, which is scheduled to be operational in July 2022. At the heart of the new plant in Niederaußem is the NESA Multi-Hearth furnace, a technology supplied by John Cockerill Environment. In this furnace, waste pellets will be roasted (torrefied) in such a way that they can be ground into dust and converted into hydrogen and CO2 in a later thermal process under the exclusion of air. The pilot plant is being built at the RWE Innovation Centre in Niederaußem because the company already has the technology for generating and storing gases there. The facility is the next step in the development of RWE's FUREC project (Fuse Reuse Recycle) – a large-scale chemical recycling plant at the Chemelot industrial park in Limburg, in the Netherlands.There, RWE plans to produce circular and green hydrogen and CO2 for the chemical industry from municipal waste. In the process, FUREC will recycle the hydrogen and CO2 that normally escape into the atmosphere when waste is incinerated or landfilled. Because much of the waste used as feedstock will be of organic origin (e.g., textiles, paper), 50% of the hydrogen recycled in this way will be green. The rest is considered circular hydrogen because it is recovered from plastic waste and used industrially. In this way, it remains in the material cycle.
