Japan – Kobe Steel‘s waste heat utilization system nearing practical stage

Together with Kobe Steel Ltd., Kobelco Eco-Solutions Co. in Japan has developed a high-efficiency thermal storage and transport system called “ThermoWay”. Japan for Sustainability reports that successful middle-distance transport experiments were recently conducted on public roads, and the system has entered the final demonstration phase before moving toward commercial scale implementation, according to an announcement earlier this year.



With this system, waste heat of 200 degrees Celsius or lower from plants and garbage incinerators, which has until now simply dissipated, can be stored in a thermal storage device and transported by truck to faraway destinations to be used as high-temperature water of 90 degrees Celsius or more. Transported waste heat can be used widely as heat source not only for hot pools, melting of snow on roads and agricultural greenhouses, but also for district cooling and heating when combined with absorption chiller units.



Smaller scale tests using a one-ton experimental heat-storage system waste, which used trucks to transport containers 5 kilometers, were successfully conducted in July 2005. More recent tests, conducted in February 2007, used a four-ton heat storage system, which is the minimum practical size for such a system, and transported containers about 35 kilometers on public roads, after which hot water of 90 degrees Celsius was successfully retrieved.



The companies believe that 20-ton heat storage systems can be put into practical use in the second half of fiscal 2007. One such system can store about 1.7 million kilocalories of heat energy (equivalent to 200 liters of oil), corresponding to the calorific value required to heat 40 households for a single day.