This Company Uses Plastic Waste To Run Vehicles On Hydrogen, With No Impact To Our Environment

Lithium-ion battery based electric vehicles might be more eco-friendly than carbon spitting IC engine vehicles, but that does not mean they are the only ones. Another, not so widespread substitute are the hydrogen-powered vehicles, which are essentially hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles.

These also exhibit several advantages over the former ones, requiring shorter charging times and simple refuels, as opposed to the long hauls on a charging station, one of the biggest limitations of lithium-ion battery based electric vehicles.

Now, a British company by the name of Waste2tricity plans to make use of the hydrogen-powered technology to run vehicles.

Reuters

For this, the company has patented a method of heating plastic waste, including bags, bottles and more, in a furnace until it gasifies into hydrogen. The resulting hydrogen can then be used to power vehicles as a zero-carbon emission, completely clean fuel that releases only water as a waste product. Producing water while running your car, imagine that!

To propel the idea, the company has collaborated with Toyota to come up with 100 new recycling and refueling stations to convert the said plastic waste into hydrogen fuel.

So what is the viability of hydrogen as a fuel? Experts at Waste2tricity claim that a 25-ton truckload of plastic waste will be enough to create 60,000 miles (96.5k kms) worth of hydrogen.

It is easy to notice how the technology solves two major problems that the earthlings face. First, the plastic waste used for the creation of hydrogen will be able to curb the plastic waste pollution that the entire Earth is suffering from, land and oceans alike. A widespread use might also bring us to a point where producing plastic actually becomes a commercially and environmentally viable activity once again.

Toyota's Fuel Cell Vehicle (FCV) (Image: Reuters)

Secondly, since the only release of the hydrogen fuel is water, transportation will never again contribute to the release of harmful gases into the environment. Professor Joe Howe of the University of Chester claims that NASA astronauts have been using drinking water (the waste H2O) from (hydrogen) fuel cells on space voyages.

Waste2tricity chairman John Hall is very optimistic about this, saying "Our technology would convert almost twice as much plastic waste into usable clean fuel and electricity per year as we (UK) currently send to China (5 lakh tons)."

However, there is a reason why hydrogen has not found a widespread use as a fuel. The element is highly unstable and has to be contained with utmost precaution. This equates to a highly invest-able containment infrastructure required for its use, no matter from where it is produced. While producing hydrogen from burning plastic looks to be a problem solver at many fronts, instead of the conventional way of producing hydrogen through electrolysis, there is still a long way to go both in terms of research and the implementation of the idea for it to become a scalable solution.