PHE!!!!!!!3 Oct 2021 15:47
For the new people. Briefly about PHE. It almost sounds too good to be true: The British company PowerHouse Energy promises to be able to generate electricity and hydrogen from plastic waste. An innovative process kills two birds with one stone and not only eliminates plastic waste that otherwise cannot be recycled, but also generates clean energy.
In contrast to other so-called energy-from-waste (EfW) processes, the British company can use its plant to process any mixture of polymers directly without having to sort or clean them beforehand. The starting material can even be wet or mixed with organic substances. In the case of plastic waste, in particular, this contamination means that it is often not recycled at all. The value is usually too low for collecting, cleaning, sorting and separating, so that the plastic waste ends up in landfills or in incinerators.
This is where PowerHouse Energy comes in, aiming for a new type of chemical recycling. The wasted plastics are recycled through the conversion technology and, according to the company, the maximum energetic calorific value is recovered. To do this, the plastic parts must first be shredded into pieces of equal size before they enter a thermal conversion chamber.
The technical process
There the plastic is heated to a very high temperature and melted and evaporated into gases within seconds. This then creates a synthesis gas that mainly consists of methane, hydrogen and a small amount of carbon monoxide.
There is no oxygen in the thermal conversion chamber, so the plastic waste cannot be burned. Instead, a non-flammable oxidizing agent in the form of steam is added, which influences the entire process and thus also the quality of the synthesis gas. The end product is then cleaned, leaving a few harmless residues that are less than five percent of the initial volume of the waste. They can be reused for other purposes or safely disposed of.
According to the company PowerHouse Energy, the final synthesis gas has a calorific value similar to that of natural gas, which is used everywhere as fuel for cooking and heating. A small part of the synthesis gas is used to operate the thermal conversion chamber, which means that the plant is self-sustaining. Heat is also produced as a by-product, which can be used for heating or cooling.
The end product: electricity or hydrogen
Electricity can then be generated from the energy-rich synthesis gas through further processing. The gas drives a number of engines that generate electricity and minimize greenhouse gas emissions using modern exhaust gas cleaning devices. Hydrogen can also be produced from the synthesis gas by passing it through a special module that separates the hydrogen from the rest of the gas.
The manufacturer of the system also advertises that it can also be operated with other waste with a high calorific value - for example, old tires. With a standard size, 45 tons of plastic waste can be processed daily, resulti
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