New York-headquartered H2-Industries announced on Wednesday that it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Oman’s Public Establishment for Industrial Estates – Madayn to develop a waste-to-hydrogen plant in the Gulf state.

The proposed $1.4 billion facility will be built on a 200,000 square metre coastal site and includes photovoltaic (PV) solar power installation with base-load capacity, H2-Industries said in a press statement.

The facility will have an initial capacity to convert up to one million tonnes of municipal solid waste each year (expandable to four million tonnes) sourced from waste management operators and mined from existing landfills. 

Oman’s first waste-to-hydrogen facility also includes the construction of a 300-megawatt (MW) base-load capable PV solar installation that will include 70 MW of electrical storage.

Once the pre-development and permitting phase is completed, the facility will start producing hydrogen in approximately 30 months, the statement noted.

The statement said the annual production of hydrogen and CO₂ generated from the waste has an export value of over $268 million, comprising 67,000 tonnes of green hydrogen and one million tonnes of CO₂. 

It said the green hydrogen could be sold and transported for international use H2-Industries’ Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carrier (LOHC) technologies, or H2-Industries can create low-cost synthetic diesel (eDiesel) or sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), with the captured CO₂ depending on international market demand.

Executive Chairman of H2-Industries, Michael Stusch, said the project will “make a substantial contribution to the country’s waste management strategy.” With almost three million inhabitants, the country produces about 1.9 million tonnes of solid waste each year. 

In January 2022, H2-Industries had announced that it had received preliminary approval from the General Authority for Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZone) in Egypt to develop a waste to hydrogen plant at East Port-Said.