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Industrial gas and chemicals company Linde has signed an agreement with Hydrogen Utopia International to use its plastic waste-to-hydrogen technology in Poland, HUI said Sept. 6.

HUI is targeting a Eur3/kg ($3.56/kg) hydrogen sales price, producing 3 mt/day of the gas from 40 mt/day of waste plastic, the company told S&P Global Platts. First production is expected in 2022, and costs are expected to fall in the future, it said.

Linde has finalized a technical feasibility evaluation to deploy Powerhouse Energy Distributed Modular Generation syngas clean-up and hydrogen extraction technology in Konin, central Poland.

"We at Linde are very happy to contribute our gas cleaning and hydrogen technologies to this forward-looking project," Selas-Linde Managing Director Harald Ranke said in a statement. "Producing hydrogen from plastic waste will help to solve an environmental problem and at the same time foster decentralized hydrogen utilization."

The sales price of Eur3/kg compares with Platts' alkaline electrolyzer-based cost of hydrogen production assessments in Europe of Eur7.00/kg Sept. 3 (Netherlands, including capex).

PEM electrolysis production was assessed at Eur8.53/kg, while blue hydrogen production by steam methane reforming (including carbon, CCS and capex) was Eur3.67/kg.

HUI and Linde are now in the final stage of signing a contract for the syngas clean-up, HUI said in the statement.

The feasibility study envisages a plant to be jointly developed by Linde, HUI and Powerhouse Energy in Konin. Hydrogen from the plant will be used to fuel city buses and other heavy-duty vehicles, as well as passenger cars.

HUI has the exclusive rights to the Powerhouse DMG system in Poland, Hungary and Greece.

The project is subject to funding approval by the EU's Just Transition Fund, part of its Green New Deal package, and will be matched by funds from the Polish government.

Poland's hydrogen strategy targets having 500 Polish-manufactured hydrogen fuel cell buses on the country's streets by 2025 and 2,000 by 2030, together with 32 refueling stations. The strategy envisages the use of low emission hydrogen in petrochemical and fertilizer production as well as the creation of a stable regulatory framework to facilitate hydrogen projects.

UK-based Powerhouse Energy's DMG is an advanced thermal conversion technology which can produce electrical power and hydrogen from waste plastics that cannot be recycled, the company said on its website.

DMG is a "sub-stoichiometric, endothermic gasification process," where large amounts of heat are applied to waste plastics, causing them to break down into constituent molecules. A series of endothermic reactions then produces syngas.

Powerhouse said the process was significantly more efficient than incineration or combustion processes.

The DMG system will also provide heat to Konin residents.