A Calgary researcher says Alberta could get cheap, green hydrogen from its trash, but only if politicians put up the hundreds of millions of dollars needed for a processing plant.
Behnaz Afsahi LaFrenz, a sustainability advisor with Calgary’s Startide Solutions, spoke at the Canadian Hydrogen Convention at the Edmonton Convention Centre April 26 about how Alberta could fight climate change by turning its landfills into hydrogen.
“Waste is a huge problem,” LaFrenz said, speaking in advance of the conference, as many municipalities struggle to deal with single-use plastics and organic waste volumes.
Trash in landfills rots and becomes methane, which has about 25 times more planet-warming potential than CO2, LaFrenz noted. Just 25 per cent of Alberta’s landfill methane is currently burned for heat and power, with the rest released as potent greenhouse gas.
As part of her degree at the University of Calgary, LaFrenz decided to see if landfill waste could be converted into hydrogen — a gas which produces only water when burned and acts as a carbon-free alternative to fossil fuels — to reduce methane emissions.
By cooking organic waste and non-recyclable plastics in a gasifier at about 1,700 C, you transform it into ash, hydrogen CO2, and other gases you can purify and trap, LaFrenz said. You can use the hydrogen for energy and the CO2 for industry or carbon-capture.
Alberta could produce a kilogram of hydrogen from trash through this process for about $1.50 to $2, LaFrenz found — cheaper than traditional methods for making hydrogen (you either use steam and natural gas at a cost of $2 to $2.50/kg, or electricity and water for $3 to $12/kg).
The secret is in the feedstock, LaFrenz explained. You must pay to get natural gas to make hydrogen, whereas in Alberta people will pay you to take trash off their hands. This negative-cost feedstock plus carbon credits for capturing CO2 make hydrogen from trash cost competitive in Alberta.
Hydrogen from trash faces some huge obstacles in Alberta, LaFrenz acknowledged. You would need an Edmonton’s worth of trash to make it economical, and hundreds of millions of dollars to build a plant to process the trash. Even if you had both, you wouldn’t get a lot of gas out of it — maybe enough to run all of Edmonton’s buses and heavy trucks.
LaFrenz said such a plant might still be worth it to help Canada reduce waste and reach its emission-reduction goals. With the requisite funding and political will, such a plant could be built in 10 years.
A summary of LaFrenz’s talk can be found at hydrogenexpo.com under the conference/technical courses menu.
