Air Water is developing to recycle CO2 from waste gas emitted by incineration plants in the ongoing verification project conducted by the Ministry of the Environment (MOE).

Air Water is a participant of the Verification Project to Construct Carbon Recycling Model which has been adopted as one of the solution models in the “Carbon Recycling Society Model Project through Resourcing of CO2” implemented by MOE from 2018 to end in 2022. The project is represented by Hitachi Zosen, which consigns the portion of project concerning CO2 recycling facility to Air Water. The demonstrative examination is aimed to verify the methanation technology to synthesize methane by having CO2 react with hydrogen in a catalyst-filled vessel after recycling CO2 from waste gases out of incineration plants.

Although methanation has some issues to solve for the future such as the storage of recycled CO2, the cost saving in storage and transportation and the procurement of inexpensive hydrogen, it is deemed to be one of the prospective technologies in the Carbon Recycling which deems CO2 to be a carbonic resource as the Government promotes.

The methanation utilizing CO2 from incineration plants like this case is the world-first attempt. It is a noticeable point of the verification particularly that all incineration plants dotted across the country can be used as gas sources.

The verification is being implemented at the Environmental Business Center in Sagamihara City, Kanagawa Prefecture, in which a small-scaled verification test has so far been carried out by separating and recycling CO2 from the waste gas exhausted out of the garbage incinerator inside the center.

In the beginning of this year as Air water succeeded to achieve a certain aimed purity and recycling rate of CO2, it started to tackle as the next step the development of equipment for commercialization. The CO2 recycling equipment to develop is assumed to have a purity of CO2 of 80% or higher and a recycling volume to be 125Nm3 per hour.