Ground breaking technology creates clean energy from plastics

Thornton Science Park

A firm which is aiming to turn unwanted plastics into clean energy claims to have made a major breakthrough in its research.

Chester based PowerHouse Energy is technology company pioneering clean energy production from waste plastic and end-of-life tyres.

The firm, which has been working the University of Chester, has announced a milestone development.
Its demonstration energy generation plant has powered the Energy Centre at the University of Chester’s Thornton Science Park microgrid for the first time.

This is the first practical application of this leading-edge technology of taking waste plastic and converting it to clean electrical energy through the firm’s Distributed Modular Gasification (DMG) process.

The DMG process gasifies the non-recyclable mixed and contaminated plastic waste at ultra-high temperatures into syngas (a fuel gas mixture consisting primarily of hydrogen), from which electricity can be generated and clean hydrogen, which can be used to power vehicles for example, can be extracted.

Bruce Nicholson, commercial operations manager at PowerHouse, said: “We are hugely grateful to our colleagues at the university who have supported the development of this technology for a year and have allowed us to demonstrate the power of our DMG facility.

“Our unique approach to creating clean hydrogen energy turns waste plastic of any type into a friend rather than an enemy and does so in a highly efficient, commercially viable and environmentally friendly way.”

Keith Allaun, chief executive of PowerHouse, said: “This is a promising step along the path to the commercial roll out of our waste to hydrogen solutions, which are also ideally suited to help reduce the vast quantities of waste plastic that is causing an environmental disaster across the world’s oceans.”

“It is momentous for the University of Chester to be the first to receive electricity from the PowerHouse equipment and to share this success of working collaboratively on such a ground breaking technology to help tackle the waste issues facing our society,” added Paul Vernon, chief executive of Thornton Science Park.

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