Landfills 'to be used as green hydrogen mines' at $1.4bn project in Oman

Ammonia is a pungent gas that is widely used to make the agricultural fertilisers while green ammonia production is where the process of making ammonia is 100% renewable and carbon-free. The highly polluting fertiliser industry 

By 2035, demand is expected to reach more than 13 million tons.  The major ammonia consuming countries in the GCC are Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman and the GCC is expected to remain a major exporting region in the long term.  Saudi Arabia is the largest ammonia exporter in the region, followed by Qatar and Oman. About 50% of GCC exports of ammonia are for the Indian market, with the remaining diverted to other Asian and African countries. 

The highly polluting industry, emits major air pollutants such as particulate matter, gaseous NH3, oxides of nitrogen, sulphur and carbon dioxide. Furthermore, environmentalists have characterized the use of fertilizers as one of the main sources of pollution in soil, water, and air.  The adverse environmental impacts of fertilizer use include nitrate leaching into ground water, emissions of greenhouse gases (nitrous oxides), pollution of soil with toxic heavy metals, and surface runoff of nitrogen and phosphorous nutrients causing aquatic eutrophication.  The nutrient losses also mean that farmers do not benefit fully from conventional fertilizers with only a fraction of what is applied actually reaching the crops, resulting in economic losses due to the need for more fertilizer applications.  To address these challenges research has been conducted to develop a new generation of fertilizers that improve nutrient use efficiency and minimizes the environmental impact. 

The use of green ammonia will at least mitigate part of the pollution caused by the industry. 

The project will source trash from waste management operators and “mined from existing landfills”, the company says, in what would appear to be a world first for H₂ production although no sourcing agreements have yet been signed with the country’s sole waste management provider, Be’ah.

The plant would be supported by a 300MW solar installation backed up by 70MW of energy storage to enable baseload operation.

While H₂-Industries says that “the primary function of the plant is to produce green energy without environmentally harmful emissions”, the facility would, however, produce one million tonnes of CO₂ per year.

The company says that carbon dioxide can be captured and combined with hydrogen to make e-fuels such as synthetic diesel or aviation fuel, but the facility would produce more CO₂ than required for such purposes.

According to Shell, e-fuel requires a hydrogen-to-CO₂ ratio of about 1:7 (by weight), but the plant would produce roughly 15 times more carbon dioxide than H₂.

In February, H₂-Industries unveiled a similar larger project at East Port Said in Egypt, which would produce 300,000 tonnes of hydrogen annually from four million tonnes of organic waste and non-recyclable plastic (with no mention of landfill mining).

At the time, the company said that project would produce H₂ at “half the levelized cost of current green hydrogen production technologies, taking the cost even lower than current levels for low-carbon and grey hydrogen production”.

The Omani project is at an earlier stage of development, with just a memorandum of understanding signed between H₂-Industries and Omani government agency Madayn, and no specific site yet lined up.

Oman currently produces about 1.9 million tonnes of solid waste each year, the company says, pointing out that its planned facility could eventually process up to four million tonnes of the stuff annually.