Air Liquide Japan announced that it succeeded to produce glass bottles replacing part of furnace fuels with hydrogen jointly with Nihon Yamamura Glass and its group company as an experimental attempt towards carbon neutral in the production of glass products.  

　The attempt was implemented at Yamamura’s bottle plant which has an oxygen combustion furnace as the only one for the glass bottle furnace in Japan.  

Air Liquide Japan is using oxygen combustion furnace to supply pure oxygen as an oxidizer with intention to cut down the waste CO₂ out of melting furnaces, but in order to increase possibilities of more reduction of CO₂ emission in the future, Air Liquide Japan is also developing technologies to replace the fuel with hydrogen.  

  In the attempt at this time, Air Liquide Japan provided hydrogen for the combustion process and its own burner dedicated for hydrogen combustion. It resulted in the successful production of glass bottles in use of hydrogen as fuel.  

  It was recognized that the produced glass bottles had maintained the same quality as that of the bottles produced conventionally by oxygen combustion, and the CO₂ emission proved to have been reduced. 

  According to Air Liquide Japan, if hydrogen infrastructures are fully prepared following the successful production at this time, such glass bottles could prove to be the containers which contribute to realization of carbon neutral.

　President and CEO Koji Makihara of Air Liquide Japan commented, “We could show a new possibility to use hydrogen for the production of glass bottles. It is significant that our expertise about hydrogen has contributed to the realization.”