UK’s CSS manufactures high quality hydrogen from waste

Wales-based Compact Syngas Solutions (CSS), a waste-to-hydrogen company, has successfully demonstrated the feasibility of producing hydrogen gas from syngas derived through “waste gasification.”

CSS recently secured nearly £4 million in government funding to enhance the environmental friendliness of its biomass and waste-to-hydrogen plants by incorporating carbon capture technology.

The waste-to-energy process relies on an advanced gasifier that transforms waste into raw syngas and char, marking a crucial initial step in the carbon capture process. CSS has innovatively developed its pressure swing adsorption (PSA) system for separating hydrogen from syngas, avoiding reliance on costly third-party suppliers in the petrochemical sector.

CSS said that the current design is anticipated to progress into a two-stage PSA process, aiming to meet waste-to-energy sector requirements by maintaining an operating pressure around 3 barg and achieving over 98% purity. The syngas, comprising hydrogen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen, water vapor, bio-oils, and trace contaminants, undergoes several gas clean-up stages.

As per CSS, the Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) process is employed in two stages, resulting in a demonstrated capability to produce hydrogen gas with over 95% purity in real syngas conditions.

Preliminary plant trials have shown the effectiveness of the PSA process even at low operating pressures (1.5 barg) and with a simplified two-stage PSA process. Ongoing work is planned at higher operating pressures to assess the cost balance between capital investment and operating expenses in the waste-to-energy business setting and its scale of operation.

CSS mentions that for numerous applications where hydrogen can replace natural gas and fuel oils, such as in boilers, furnaces, and hydrogen-converted diesel engines, a purity of 98% is sufficient. The company asserts that achieving very high hydrogen purity (99.99%) is unnecessary and cost-prohibitive in such scenarios.