Stock - Beeha and Chinook
Image Credit: Supplied

Dubai: The waste-to-energy initiative is gaining traction in the UAE, with Sharjah’s Beeah and UK’s Chinook Services to build the region’s ‘first’ waste-to-hydrogen plant. The facility will produce cleaner and lower cost green hydrogen and activated carbon.

The production of green hydrogen will be cheaper than that of fossil fuels. The plant will host a hydrogen fuelling station, equipped to provide fuel cell grade hydrogen for trucks and buses.

The project “demonstrates how Beeah can address the twin challenge of unrecyclable waste and contributing to green mobility simultaneously”. Non-recyclable waste wood and plastic will be processed using Chinook’s gasification and pyrolysis technology, which will produce up to 18,000 kilogram of green hydrogen a day at full operational capacity.

“The technology breaks down hydrocarbons from waste through advanced thermal treatment to release and recover green hydrogen,” said Dr. Rifat Chalabi, Chairman and co-founder of Chinook Sciences Group. “Then, when the green hydrogen is used in vehicles, it emits only water as a by-product.”

The companies will work to establish more such facilities in the region. As the hydrogen market starts to build up, the plant will switch more of its operational hours away from activated carbon and toward green hydrogen production to meet requirements.

Green hydrogen could supply up to 25 per cent of the world's energy needs and become a $10 trillion addressable market by 2050.