Monday, March 31, 2008 - 2:30 PM

Hydrogen from Steam/CO2 Reforming of Waste

Terry R. Galloway, Fred H. Schwartz, and Joe Waidl. Intellergy Corp.

Globally today the commitment for the coming hydrogen economy is here. And for us in California, we continue to stay on the leading edge. We are demonstrating hydrogen engine vehicles, fuel cell hybrids, hydrogen plug-in hybrids, together with hydrogen turbo-gen sets as peakers, wind turbines electrolytically producing hydrogen, etc. Federal and State incentives for producing hydrogen from renewable sources and for building the infrastructure for dispensing this hydrogen for vehicle fuels are critical. Also we anticipate soon we will have a tax on carbon emissions to provide the economic drive for everyone to reduce or eliminate our carbon footprint. Indeed, we are transitioning away from fossil-based hydrogen produced by steam-reforming of fossil natural gas to hydrogen produced from our vast resource of organic bio-materials, as well as organic waste. At Intellergy, for over two decades we have been and continue to be demonstrating the production of hydrogen from a large variety of both waste streams as well as agri-materials. Of course, this is done without any combustion of feed or external fuels with their undesirable greenhouse gas emissions. This paper focuses on two of our most recent demonstrations of steam/CO2 reforming of a medwaste stream and of an agri-materials stream. They are very different in their physical characteristics as well as chemical content (i.e. plastic content), and with our special feed equipment are fed continuously and successfully into our process without problem-admissions of air. This was critically important in order to produce the most valuable, hydrogen-rich syngas for economically attractive purification to hydrogen of high fuel-grade purity – green hydrogen. Also of importance, is the production of other streams of eco-products for carbon-sequestration that help ensure that these plants have a rapid payback. In this way, the customer with their agri-material or waste problem does not need to purchase such a plant, but only to have the plant on their site to solve their problem and turn a profit. Widely deploying such plants help solve air and water quality problems as well as achieve greenhouse gas emissions goals of California, the U.S. and around the world.