Powerhouse Energy Share Discussion Threads

[new tech] 13/6/2018 09:18

Looks like the ban on petrol and diesel cars in the UK could be brought forwrd, hastening the demand for electric/hydrogen cars.

[top tips] 13/6/2018 08:58

Topped up again. I think this will take-off this summer.

[coldspring] 12/6/2018 16:30

Dont feed the troll just filter

[tenapen] 11/6/2018 18:02

Off Topic PHE

but if your interested in cleaner Oceans.

[top tips] 11/6/2018 17:25

Supernumerary the poster who keeps recycling his own misleading comments no matter how many times others correct him.

[top tips] 11/6/2018 17:24

Ask the companies about to form SPVs to use PHE's modules and who already operate waste transfer and processing sites.

[supernumerary] 11/6/2018 15:00

NT - thanks, I think that summarises the gap between aspiration and achievement rather nicely.

Regarding waste streams, of course there will always be plastic, but ever more of it will be recyclable. This gives it a value so it's not something you'll get gate fees for processing. What's left after sorting for recycling will be dross full of all sorts of nasty pollutants - what if somebody sticks a half-empty bottle of hydrogen peroxide or acetone in their rubbish? Or batteries in old electrical goods? I don't believe it will be safe to put this stuff into a phe reactor.

Millions of tyres in Mexico are no use to a little phe processing centre in the UK suburbs. And I doubt whether raw tyres - with their additives, and metal and kevlar beads, and alloy valves - will ever be usable fuel for a reactor, even if they're shredded first. Tyre crumb has these pollutants removed and therefore is even more expensive than shredded tyres.

Also, where is the hydrogen going to go? There's no bottling plant, but if there was, what's the commercial rate for bottled hydrogen? I believe ITM only get £10 a kg because they're dispensing it to motorists. Is KA also planning a filling station at every waste disposal site?

[top tips] 11/6/2018 14:47

Fuel for thought: how to transform waste plastic
Keith Allaun
CEO & Director, PowerHouse Energy Group plc

Future of Plastic The scale of plastic pollution is so large that recycling is not enough. We need an eco-friendly waste disposal solution — such as turning unwanted plastic into hydrogen fuel.

Fuel for thought how to transform waste plastic

Keith Allaun, CEO and Director of PowerHouse Energy Group plc, wants to make one thing very clear. It's not plastic he has an issue with, per se. Plastic is, he says, a life-changing material that has revolutionised agriculture and healthcare, to take just two examples.

The scale of plastic pollution is so large that recycling is not enough. We need another, eco-friendly solution.

Rather it's the management of plastic that is a major problem. “We have to manage it in a more effective way,” he says. “We are seeing significant disruption in marine eco-systems in particular because of the introduction of plastic into the environment.

If we continue to make single-use plastics at the same pace, by 2050 we are going to be dealing with an ocean that has more plastic in it, by weight, than fish.”

Turning plastic waste into fuel

Because the UK doesn't have the capacity to deal with the amount of plastic waste we generate, 500,000 tonnes of it is sent abroad for recycling every year. This is a crazy situation, says Allaun. Firstly, shipping plastic overseas leaves a carbon footprint. Secondly, much of this waste plastic isn't recycled and ends up in the ocean anyway.

Allaun advocates a novel waste-to-energy solution, which turns unwanted plastic into hydrogen that can be used to fuel road transport and , in the future, hydrogen-powered trains and ferries. It's an environmentally-friendly waste management approach that removes waste plastic from the eco-system and helps in the fight against climate change. “By displacing fossil fuels, we save in the region of 21,000Kg of CO2 per tonne of hydrogen created,” says Allaun.

Unwanted plastic is a store of clean, hydrogen fuel

Hydrogen is also environmentally advantageous because there are no tail pipe emissions when using it as a fuel- only water vapor. Waste plastic can be a resource. Plastic is only a waste if we don’t extract the maximum value of that resource and use it responsibly.

Taking waste plastic and turning it into something positive is a compelling model for companies to follow. “We have an obligation to bring some good to this planet and leverage technologies that can responsibly utilise plastic and eliminate it before it reaches the ocean,” says Allaun. “Because once it gets out there, it's too late.”

[englishlongbow] 11/6/2018 14:32

The key thing now is to break ground on the first commercial deployment and then roll out more next year.

Funding will not be an issue as PHE do not have to contribute to SPV's unless they want to to get an extra slice of the profits, but PHE will still earn their 20% royalties regardless making a revenue stream that will grow cumulatively the more units that get deployed.

[new tech] 11/6/2018 13:59

This article from a few years ago just before they abandoned the Pyromex system and Munich site in favour of developing the new improved G3 system (which is thus even better than Pyromex):


How One Billion Rotting Tyres Could Lead You to 228% Gains
Red Hot Penny Shares
2011

You are standing in the scorching heat of the Mexican sun. You are just a few miles from the US border and right in front of you is one of the most lucrative untapped resources this side of the Texan oil fields.

It’s a rubbish dump. The Ciudad Juarez rubbish dump – home to one of the biggest piles of used car tyres in the world. For years, tyres have been collected from US highways and dumped here. And stretching out in front of you now is a steaming mountain of around 3.8 million rubber tyres that have been left to rot in the sun.

In fact there are thought to be more than 1 billion tyres dumped in towns dotted along the US-Mexico border. Some of these are burnt to generate power for cement plants nearby. Others are ground up and made into allweather playing fields. But many are simply dumped illegally – creating an ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes and rats. The tyres regularly catch fire, contaminating the air for miles around.

Why are these tyres such a potentially valuable resource? Because one company has recently discovered a clean and highly profitable way to turn them into electricity. And if everything goes to plan, this penny share could make you a 228% return from here.

The Munich Airport trial that could generate a billion dollars

In fact this penny share is not only targeting Mexican tyres. It’s been attracting interest from all across the planet with municipalities and big companies looking to offload big reserves of everything from coal waste to sewage – all of which could soon be used to generate vast amounts of electricity. Now this is not the first company to tackle the challenge of converting waste into energy. But it could be the only one to do it in a way that generates no harmful emissions and leaves nothing but a harmless sandy residue. Today, at a site just outside Munich Airport, its first waste-to-energy converter is in its fourth month of trials and over one hundred customers, ready to place 1bn dollars’ worth of business, are waiting on the results. I have never seen a waste-to-energy company that looks more convincing or offers such an immediate prospect of major sales.

The company that is poised to reap the commercial benefits is Powerhouse Energy. Let me explain why I think the shares could give you a 228% return from here...

A tremendous solution to the waste problem This country has a serious problem with waste. Every two hours we generate enough rubbish to fill the Albert Hall. The traditional disposal method of simply dumping it into a large hole in the ground is environmentally damaging and outdated. And government regulation is making it increasingly expensive to send waste to landfill, stimulating a widespread search for alternatives. The same is true all over the world.

Recycling has a part to play, while there are various methods for burning waste. These are incineration, pyrolysis, fluidised bed gasification and ultra-high temperature plasma arc burning. But none of these, though, are entirely satisfactory. They can either accept only a limited range of waste feedstock; or they generate toxic emissions; or they leave awkward residuals like tar and oils; or they only make commercial sense on a very large scale.

So the perfect solution is a small, but scalable, plant that produces no emissions, makes no noise, and is entirely safe. With these characteristics a plant can be situated at the point where the waste is generated and burnt to produce energy either for use on the spot or for feeding into the grid. Instead of having to pay to have its waste accepted, a supermarket, for example, could simply feed it into an onsite processor that converts it into power used back in the store.

Turning waste into high quality synthetic gas

This is what PowerHouse believes it will be able to offer, and it is all thanks to work done over the past 20 years in Switzerland by Peter Jeney and Dr Hans Weber. These two men founded Pyromex, of which PowerHouse already own a 30% stake and has the intention of buying out the other 70%.

The Pyromex process can take virtually any type of carbon-bearing waste and turn it into a synthetic gas, leaving an inert residual char that can be used as a building material. The synthetic gas can be burnt to generate electricity, or else it can be converted, via the Fischer-Tropsch process, into liquid fuel.

The key to the Pyromex process is the temperature to which the waste is subjected

Incineration operates at a temperature of around 760°C-1,000°C and releases noxious gases and airborne pollutants into the atmosphere, while creating undesirable residuals such as tar. Pyrolysis occurs at a slightly higher temperature of 870°C-1,100°C and while it is more efficient for energy recovery, it also releases unwanted emissions and generates the same residuals. Plasma arc gasification uses high temperature plasma torches to create a heat in excess of 5,000°C. This basically turns anything into gas, but it is a high maintenance technology that consumes a lot of energy in its operation. The Pyromex technology subjects waste to temperatures in the 1,250°C - 1,700°C range, in a controlled oxygen-free environment. The waste feedstock is first shredded, then oxygen is removed and it is fed into a cylindrical reactor through which passes a resistive heating rod that produces the very high temperature.

The waste revolves through the molybdenum alloy cylinder as it is burnt, with one key element of this technology being the boron-silicon coating on the cylinder wall that stops it from melting and reflects heat back into the centre. The process converts up to 95% of the energy content of any organic waste material into a high-energy synthetic gas, while producing zero emissions and no harmful residues. Fifteen per cent of this syngas is recycled to power the process, leaving 80% of the produced energy available for sale.

Why PowerHouse has the potential to return 228%

Already the technology has been successfully used on dried sewage sludge. With the lessons learnt from that, modifications have been made and now a trial is under way near Munich, where the Pyromex unit is situated alongside a mixed refuse sorting site and has permission to test 23 different waste streams. The 25 tonne per day unit was fired up at the end of July, and has been generating refuse-derived fuel. Three months of pre-commissioning trials are now under way. Following this phase the unit will be connected to an industry-proven internal combustion-based generation set of 1.3MW electrical capacity. Assuming that these trials are successfully completed, then PowerHouse already has a number of customers lined up. It is not planning to build and operate these plants, although this might come at a later date. It intends to contract this out to Simon, a division of Simon Engineering, and also arrange for servicing by a third party. However, it will sign the contract with the customer and intends to take 30% of the value up front to ensure positive cash flow. What could all of this be worth?

According to the financial models of Merchant Securities the valuation today should be 47p, rising to 62p in a year’s time. But another clue comes from the terms of the acquisition of Pyromex. For the outstanding 70% of Pyromex, PowerHouse is paying £2.5m immediately, with another £15.25m ‘when Powerhouse’s stock market value exceeds £92m or it achieves a profit after tax of £6.1m’; and another £15.25m ‘when the stock market value exceeds £168m and the profit after tax is £12.2m’. Today PowerHouse is valued at just £28m. These payment terms suggest that company insiders expect a big valuation uplift from here.

RHPS Verdict:

Australia’s leading coal and clean energy company Linc Energy holds a 9.99% stake in PowerHouse because it thinks that the Pyromex process could convert low grade or waste coal into energy in a way that produces no emissions. This is just one more intriguing aspect of a business that will be paid by both by its suppliers, of waste, and by its customers, for electricity.

Now there are of course a few risks that we need to consider. A lot depends on the success of the final trials in Munich. It is important thatn these go according to plan. And even if the trial is successful, we may still see a slower pace of orders from customers if the global economy sinks into the mire.

But PowerHouse has already named thirteen actual customers or ‘immediate prospects’ with projects valued at $130.5m, and has another 120 prospects accounting for a total sales pipeline worth over $1bn. Assuming that today’s trials at Munich are a success then PowerHouse could soon be selling this clean, green, energy solution all over the world.

[new tech] 11/6/2018 13:57

Plastics will not disappear. There will be some plastic substitutions but that will still be organic based and suitable for gasification. Some plastics will also have additives added to help them biodegrade should they reach the environment (e.g. Oxybio plastics) but they will still be gasified if they remain in the normal waste cycle. Accross the middle east you have countries rich in petroleum resources that will continue to produce plastics but poor in wood for paper substitutes. Also vehicles and cycles will continue to run on rubber tyres. Additionally PHE's modules will be able to take over 50 waste types.

It was a good point from tt about co-locating PHE gasifiers within existing waste facilities - which is something KA has said will happen, and this also helps the economics as you do not need all the infrastructure of a new site in every instance.

[vatnabrekk] 11/6/2018 13:21

I understand that about 50% of old tyres are currently either incinerated or put into landfill, and some of that is already shredded.

[supernumerary] 11/6/2018 11:08

As far as I can see they can't burn tyres, only tyre crumb. This is not a waste stream, but a valuable industrial commodity. What's the going rate for tyre crumb, vatna? $100/ton? Maybe a bit less if you can take it with bits of metal in it , but who knows if that's feasible...

As for plastic - the only stream they'll be paid to process is that which emerges at the end of the sorting process as unrecyclable. And that's horrible stuff - how many disposable toothbrushes, with their motors and batteries, will it take to burn out a phe reactor?

So they'll have to buy all their inputs. How does the business model work with that?

[mikepotash] 11/6/2018 11:07

Should have been sold, but the sentiment was probably correct!

[mikepotash] 11/6/2018 11:07

So who,just sod 3m shares n the back of that great news?!

[rathean] 11/6/2018 09:41

Very positive coverage in esteemed company, well worth the rcs announcement and shows a wider awareness of this business and it's supporters.

[top tips] 11/6/2018 08:49

PHE are unique in terms of their technical approach and affordable 25 tpd modular systems.