The four-company coalition of Air Water, Kajima, Nippon Steel & Sumikin Pipeline & Engineering and Air Products Japan will carry out verification of the fuel-cell power generation in use of hydrogen derived from biogas, hydrogen stations and the transportation of compressed hydrogen in Hokkaido.　　

This project was adopted by Ministry of the Environment (MOE) for its “Regional Partnership/Low-carbon Hydrogen Technology Verification Project for 2015”, and the coalition of the project is represented by Air Water. The verification will be implemented as to the development of a low-carbon hydrogen supply chain for a period of five years from this year to 2019. The total budget of about JPY1.9 billion will be fully borne by MOE.

Shikaoi-cho now produces 3,900 m3 per day of biogas with the excreta of domestic cattle as a raw material at the “Environment Conservation Center” run by the town. According to the four-company coalition’s business plan, the coalition purchases part of the biogas to utilize it as a raw material for the integrated implementation of the project, including the purification of methane, the production of hydrogen, filling of curdles, pure hydrogen fuel cell power generation and the construction and management of hydrogen stations. The project is aimed to demonstrate possibility to develop a low-carbon and advanced hydrogen supply chain (production, storage, transportation and use) by means of utilizing the biogas of renewable energy.

In the demonstration project Air Water will be responsible for the production process and Kajima for the integration of each utilization process to construct necessary facilities. The production process purifies the biogas using the Parmia membrane made by Air Products to attain a methane of 95% or more purity. This methane in the next process is reformed to a hydrogen of 4N by the hydrogen generator “VH” made by AWI. This hydrogen is utilized not only in the hydrogen station to be constructed near the environment conservation center, but also is filled into curdles for transportation to other places.　

Provided in the use process are 1 KW pure-H2 fuel cells made by Toshiba Fuel Cell System. The electric power or warm water produced by this fuel cell is served to neighboring facilities or for the actual consumption at the local livestock farmers. As for the hydrogen stations, it is now under consideration to supply hydrogen to fuel cell-based forklifts as well as automobiles. Designing of the equipment and the placement of orders are scheduled to be finished by the end of this year. The construction will probably start in next spring, and it is planned to start the operation of all the examination facilities in autumn. The production capacity is still under discussion, but at the moment the membrane-type methane purifier is planned to have a capacity of 50 m3/h and the hydrogen generator 110m3/h respectively.