Hyundai’s latest hydrogen filling station will be on a landfill near Jakarta
Hyundai’s next hydrogen refuelling station won’t be built next to a wind farm, or a tech park, or a glistening new factory. No, it’ll be built on a landfill – a working rubbish tip on the outskirts of Bandung in Indonesia.
Don’t worry, though – Hyundai haven’t lost their minds. This is a cunning plan to make hydrogen fuel from decomposing waste that would otherwise vent into the atmosphere.
Known as Sarimukti, the site takes in around 80% of Bandung’s 1,500 tonnes of daily waste. As that waste decomposes, methane is released – a potent greenhouse gas, or, if you catch it, a remarkably useful fuel.
Hyundai plans to capture that methane, reform it into hydrogen, and use that hydrogen to supply a small on-site refuelling station – all up and running by 2027, if things go to plan.
The project is the first international outing of Hyundai’s waste-to-hydrogen (W2H) programme, already producing fuel from rubbish and sewage sludge at several sites in South Korea.
From bin juice to bus fuel
Hyundai’s approach is straightforward: capture the methane, clean it up, and feed it through a steam methane reformer supplied by Hyundai Rotem to produce hydrogen on site.
Construction is due to begin later this year, following a completed feasibility study. Hyundai says a consortium of Korean organisations will support the project, though it hasn’t named them yet.
The announcement came during the Global Hydrogen Ecosystem Summit in Jakarta this week, where the Indonesian government also unveiled its National Hydrogen and Ammonia Roadmap – a long-term plan that includes hydrogen use in the upcoming capital city, Nusantara.
Hyundai was listed as one of the roadmap’s key contributors.
Reheated infrastructure
Rather than build something entirely new, Hyundai will make use of what’s already in the ground, with the station set to reuse Pertamina’s existing compressed natural gas (CNG) infrastructure.
The pipes, compressors and access already in place – it will just be repurposed to handle hydrogen instead.
Hyundai describes the project as a “waste-to-hydrogen ecosystem”, covering everything from production and land access to dispensing, logistics and vehicle use – though details on which vehicles, and how many, have yet to be confirmed.
As part of the development, Hyundai has also partnered with NGO Good Neighbors to support clean water and healthcare access around Sarimukti.
Korean firm Sejin G&E will help stabilise the landfill itself, which has a track record of fires, floods and the occasional landslide – none of which pair particularly well with fuelling infrastructure.
Hyundai’s bin-gas blueprint goes abroad
This is the first time Hyundai’s W2H model has left South Korea. At home, similar plants in Chungju, Cheongju and Paju are already converting organic waste and sewage sludge into hydrogen, and now Hyundai wants to prove the same model works elsewhere.
The Indonesian project falls under Hyundai’s “HTWO” hydrogen business unit, which spans everything from production systems to fuel cell vehicles.
The company laid out its ASEAN strategy at CES 2024, pitching waste-to-hydrogen as a scalable model for emerging markets. This is the first piece of that plan to leave the drawing board.
Hyundai also operates a car plant near Jakarta, opened in 2022, and now refers to Indonesia as its “gateway to the broader ASEAN market”. Which, stripped of the branding, means a large, supportive country with a waste problem and the policy appetite to turn it into something useful.
