Waste to Hydrogen demonstration plant

The scope of this flagship topic is to develop and demonstrate a pilot plant processing wastes and converting them into hydrogen. Different conversion processes maybe be considered, involving for example, but not limited to, gasification, pyrolysis, plasma supported, electrochemical processes, steam gasification, including multistage processes and related reactors.

Projects should bring one of the available conversion technologies to a higher maturity by testing and validating a demonstrator plant with a reactor size of at least 3 MW working in an operational environment for at least 4,000 hours with an equivalent yearly hydrogen production of 180 tonnes H2. Proposals should demonstrate the potential for upscaling and market deployment in the near term. All innovative conversion technologies approaching the expected scale of operation can be considered.

The system developed should include the following options:

• A multi-stage waste to hydrogen technology, at a relevant industrial scale, including all the units and subunits to allow a proper and independent functioning of the plant;
• Eventual gas upgrading, separation, purification and compression stages delivering hydrogen at a minimum purity level of 99.9%, or following the end user requirements, and at a target pressure of 30 bars, integrated and adapted to the specific technology and conversion process;
• A built-in design of the demo technology to optimise the overall conversion efficiency, including options such as solar thermal and/or PV, waste heat and waste gas management with exclusion for downstream energy (co)generation solutions.

Waste in this topic is understood as mainly organic waste (for example but not limited to agricultural residues, sewage, urban waste, etc.) Proposals should focus on wastes without any direct recycling potential and on the production of sustainable, renewable hydrogen (in line with the requirements of the EC proposal for the revision of RED II[[https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/default/files/amendment-renewable-energy-directive-2030-climate-target-with-annexes_en.pdf]])

Proposals should address the following:

• Improve the operational parameters of the reactor processing wastes beyond the current state of the art;
• Optimisation of the processing of wastes to maximise the process parameters and the hydrogen yield;
• Adapt and validate the technology for a wide acceptance range of wastes, including at high moisture content (up to 50%) and calorific values (from 2 to 5 kWh/kg of waste);
• Increase of the overall efficiency of the processing reactors and units, maintaining use of waste heat and gas streams as well as integrating other renewable resources e.g. of solar energy for the wastes drying or reactor preheating;
• Increase the overall plant efficiency beyond the present state-of–the-art, as indicated in the previous section;
• Optimise the mass and energy balance of the process including all the products streams (e.g. hydrogen, other coproducts and the internal thermal and electric energy consumption;
• Perform plant multi objective optimisation, dynamic modelling to reach a final optimised design and to identify the process parameters for the demo control and safety strategies;
• Development gas separation and purification units delivering the hydrogen at a minimum purity level of 99.9%, in any case adapted at the end-use application proposed;
• Locate the demo plant in a region with a hydrogen end use identified at least at the scale of the prototype plant;
• Perform a techno-economic analysis with the target of LCOH < 3 €/kgH₂ for the scaled up plant;
• Perform an LCA and LCC analysis comparing the specific technology with other hydrogen production solutions, including electrolysis and conversion of the raw biogas, as well as other waste to energy/renewable fuel (e.g. biowaste) pathways including approaches such as direct incineration, biomethane production through anaerobic digestion, bio-fermentation or classical and plasma arc gasification, pyrolysis.

Proposals are expected to address sustainability and circularity aspects of proposed technologies.

Proposals are encouraged to explore synergies with the existing or upcoming related projects funded by the Innovation Fund [[For example HyValue (https://www.hyvalue.com/innovation-fund/) and FUREC (https://climate.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2022-07/LSC2_List_of_pre-selected_projects_6.pdf)]].

Proposals are also encouraged to explore synergies with projects running under the EURAMET research programmes EMPIR[[https://www.euramet.org/research-innovation/research-empir]] and the European Partnership on Metrology (e.g Met4H2[[https://www.euramet.org/index.php?id=1913]]) concerning quality assurance measurements which aim at ensuring that the purity of hydrogen produced is at the expected grade.

Applicants should provide a funding plan to ensure implementation of the project in synergies with other sources of funding. If no other sources of funding will be required, this should be stated clearly in the proposal, with a commitment from the partners to provide own funding. If additional sources of funding will be required, proposals should present a clear plan on which funding programmes at either EU (e.g. Structural Funds, Just Transition Fund, Innovation Fund, Connecting Europe Facility,…) or national levels will be targeted[[Including awarded, secured or planned funding]]. In these cases, applicants should present a credible planning that includes forecasted funding programmes and their expected time of commitment.

This topic is expected to contribute to EU competitiveness and industrial leadership by supporting a European value chain for hydrogen and fuel cell systems and components.

It is expected that Guarantees of origin (GOs) will be used to prove the renewable character of the hydrogen that is produced. In this respect consortium may seek out the issuance and subsequent cancellation of GOs from the relevant Member State issuing body and if that is not yet available the consortium may proceed with the issuance and cancellation of non-governmental certificates (e.g CertifHy[[https://www.certifhy.eu]]).

Proposals should provide a preliminary draft on ‘hydrogen safety planning and management’ at the project level, which will be further updated during project implementation.

Activities are expected to start at TRL 5 and achieve TRL 7 by the end of the project - see General Annex B.

The maximum Clean Hydrogen JU contribution that may be requested is EUR 10.00 million – proposals requesting Clean Hydrogen JU contributions above this amount will not be evaluated.

At least one partner in the consortium must be a member of either Hydrogen Europe or Hydrogen Europe Research.

Purchases of equipment, infrastructure or other assets used for the action must be declared as depreciation costs. However, for the following equipment, infrastructure or other assets purchased specifically for the action (or developed as part of the action tasks): reactor and all units and subunits to allow a proper and independent functioning of the waste to hydrogen plant (e.g. gas upgrading, separation, purification, compression, etc.), costs may exceptionally be declared as full capitalised costs.

The conditions related to this topic are provided in the chapter 2.2.3.2 of the Clean Hydrogen JU 2023 Annual Work Plan and in the General Annexes to the Horizon Europe Work Programme 2023–2024 which apply mutatis mutandis.