A new high-rise building with a recycling system

Takenaka Corp., one of Japan’s general constructors, will build a new high-rise building in Osaka. It will be Japan’s highest building when it is completed in 2014. It is 300 meters high and 60-storied, and it is equipped with a system to recycle food scraps and discharged water. Using pipes with a length of 400 meters, the system produces biogases from food scraps coming from restaurants inside the building and uses them for air-conditioning and hot-water supply. The company developed the urban biogas system in collaboration with an environment solution company. The recycling system sends food scraps produced by restaurants to the basement using the pipes and process them in the fermenter to make methane gases. And the gases will be used for the cogeneration system and boilers. The discharged water from hotel rooms and bathrooms will also be reused. The new building is scheduled to discharge three tons of food scraps daily, and the daily amount of discharged water is scheduled at 700 tons from restaurants and 550 tons from bathrooms. The biogas system will generate electricity equivalent to the amount consumed by 100 households. This self-contained building will supposedly grow widespread in the future.

On electric vehicle

Advanced countries agreed to reduce greenhouse gases by 80% by 2050 in last year’s G8 Summit. Clearly, this is not a target that can be achieved easily. However, the two driving force are helpful to realize this difficult-to-achieve target. They are electric vehicle (EV) and photovoltaic generation. It is vital to restructure a society using these two technologies that have unlimited potential, and the restructuring asks consumer-electronics makers to expand their business domains. It may become a reality that the largest home electric appliance is an EV some time in the future.

Low entry barrier
There are about 60 million vehicles in Japan and more than 1 billion vehicles in the world today, and they all are supposed to be replaced by EVs in several decades. EVs can contribute to the reduction of CO2 emissions if photovoltaic generation and wind generation are used for charging. In the days of gasoline vehicles, entry barrier is really high because lots of investments are needed for manufacturing plants and development costs. However, EVs do not large amount of investments, and venture companies and home electronics makers can find business opportunities. Tesla Motors in the U.S. succeeded in mass production of its roadster in 2008, just five years after the company was founded. Mounting a Japanese lithium iron battery, it has better acceleration than a Porsche.

Tesla’s innovation
Tesla achieved two innovations. First, they changed the structure of the auto industry from integration to assembling. Tesla roadster is assembled using parts coming from various parts of the world. The auto body comes from England, battery from Japan, and motor from Taiwan. And the roadster is assembled in California. Second, they established the combinatorial technology. Although they do not have their own elemental technology, they constructed an inexpensive and highly reliable battery system by developing the control technology using the general-purpose battery stored in a notebook PC. They also employed a general-purpose tri-phase current induction motor instead of a permanent magnet synchronous motor that uses an expensive scarce resource neodymium.

Competitors in the market
A Chinese battery maker and a Korean vehicle make also move into the EV market. Japanese automakers are also active, and Nissan is scheduled to launch its electric vehicle Leaf coming October. From a comprehensive viewpoint, Japanese auto makers excel the three companies mentioned above. It took Tesla two years to ship 1,000 roadsters, while late entrant Mitsubishi Motors needed only half a year to ship 1,000 EVs. Nissan plans to ship 50,000 Leaf EVs in the initial year. Actually, Nissan is most active in developing EVs. Nissan decided to invest US$1,700 million to build a new plant to produce batteries for its EV “Leaf.” Nissan already received 13,000 advance orders for Leaf. Toyota announced the capital and business alliance with Tesla Motors. Nissan believes that EVs will account for 10% of vehicles on the earth, saying that it costs US$50 to fill a gasoline tank of a standard car, but it costs only US$3 to charge an EV. The difference is enormous. Nissan announced that it opened up the way to develop a lithium ion battery that has two times as much capacity as the exiting product. It allows an EV to travel 300 km that is double the distance the existing car can cover in one charge.

Moves of Japanese home electronics makers toward electric vehicle
As contrast to auto makers, home electronics makers are somewhat quiet. Lithium ion battery is the most critical part of an EV. Japanese home electronics makers, such as Sanyo, Sony, and Panasonic, have an established position in the production of lithium batteries. Tesla admitted that it employs a Japanese lithium ion battery for its roadster, though it declined to disclose the name of the producer. It is vital to employ a highly reliable lithium ion battery to achieve success in the EV business. Home electronics makers seem to have great potential of success in finished EV production. No Japanese home electronics makers have branched out into EV production, but leading home electronics makers have been playing a leading role in the development of EV.

Panasonic supplies lithium ion batteries to Toyota’s plug-in hybrid EVs. It developed a new battery module that uses lithium ion battery in October 2009. This battery module contributes much to the increase of travel distance and reduction of the production cost of an EV. In November 2009, Sanyo made it public that it would commercialize the battery module that Panasonic developed. Sony is a leading lithium ion battery producer worldwide. The company once announced that it would not produce batteries for cars, but it has decided to produce batteries for EVs judging from the growing popularity of EVs. It will invest 100 billion yen to build the system for mass production. Sony is reportedly negotiating with several auto makers.

Hitachi does not build a completed car by itself, but it has been producing lots of auto parts. It first succeeded in producing domestic electronic components for cars for the first time in Japan in 1930. It expanded the auto-related business constantly, and span off the lithium ion battery production division in 2004. Hitachi has competitive edge in the production of power semiconductors and the ability to prepare in-house core parts and components for EVs.

Home electronic makers’ efforts to associate EVs with smart grid
Besides being involved in the EV business, home electronic makers can help conserve energy by constructing efficient equipment for transmission and transformation of electricity. The smart grid is to reform the power grid to be more efficient and decentralized using information technology and allow for energy exchange between households and power plants. That is, the concept of smart grid covers solar house, mega solar, wind generation, existing power plants, and small regional power plants for emergency use. Actually, lots of business opportunities are available for home electric makers. In this sense, EVs may be built by home electric makers in the near future. Auto makers and home electronics makers will compete in the EV market. Be alert! Competitors come in from the unforeseeable business arena.

Japanese wind generation plant goes to Thailand.

Japan Wind Development, Japan’s third largest wind generation company, will build a large-scale wind plant with an output of 180,000 kW in Thailand. The company will extend its know-how to the construction and give maintenance service after the plant is built. The new power plant will be built on the prairie 150 meters above sea level in eastern part of Thailand. The total investment will be about 40 billion yen, 20-40% of which will be paid by Japan Wind Development. The construction work will start in 2012 and part of the plant will be put into operation in 2013. As Japan’s biggest wind plant has an output of less than 80,000 kW, the plant to be built in Thailand is far bigger than the Japan’s biggest. It is also being planned to introduce a storage battery to stabilize the transmission amount. All electricity generated by the plant will be supplied to Thai power companies. In addition to the fee for providing technology, Japan Wind Development will receive profits coming from selling electricity on a pro-rata basis. Since Japan is a mountainous country, it is increasingly hard to find suitable places for wind generation, and wind generation is subject to environmental assessment. Actually, Japan Wind Development recorded a deficit of 2,200 million in 2009 due to the sluggish domestic wholesale power market. The Japanese government is scheduled to introduce a system in which electric power companies buy all electricity generated by wind at a certain price, but it is advisable not to reply on this optimistic move too much. As is often the case, the government may change the policy all of sudden. The key to the growth of the Japanese wind generation business totally depends on how wind generation companies can develop the foreign market.

Lead of a mechanical pencil to measure pollutants in water

An associate professor of Nihon Pharmaceutical University and an analytical equipment manufacturer in Tokyo successfully developed the method to measure the concentration of pollutants like arsenic contained in water and eliminated the necessity to use an expensive platinum electrode. Because the measurement cost is low, this method will be used in developing countries. They plan to put this method into practical use in three years. Because the lead is electricity-conducting and made of carbon with few impurities, the flow of electricity changes depending on the concentration of pollutants if it is put in dirty water. The method enabled them to measure arsenic of 5 micrograms per one liter. This is half the safety standard of arsenic concentration in drinking water specified by WHO. They confirmed that the method provides sufficient degree of precision to confirm the safety of water. An electrode made of metal such as platinum is expensive, and it costs much and requires great care to cleanse it for repeated usage. The lead of a mechanical pencil is inexpensive, and it does not need big equipment for measurement. This method can be used to measure adrenaline in pharmaceuticals and catechin in foods. This method is of great help to developing countries in short of clean water when it is put into practical use.

On carbon fiber

Market overview
Carbon fiber is one of the industrial products that allow Japan to maintain technology edge. The three producers, Toray Industries, Toho Tenax (formerly Toho Rayon and currently a Teijin’s subsidiary), and Mitsubishi Rayon account for about 70% of the world market. Western companies used to be dominant in the past because carbon fibers were in great demand for war supplies including jet fighters. Back then, there were as many as 15 producers worldwide, and Japanese companies were producing carbon fibers for sporting goods like golf clubs and tennis rackets.

The market changed drastically on the occasion of the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Western companies withdrew from the carbon fiber business because of the rapid decline in military demand, and Japanese companies replaced the western companies. The three Japanese companies were in a favorable position because they all are fiber makers, whereas western companies were chemical companies without sufficient knowledge of fibers. Today, Toray has 27% share and Toho Tenax 21% share in the world market. Three Japanese companies are followed by Taiwan Plastics that produces only carbon fibers of a single grade for general purposes. Today, it is hardly possible to launch an artificial satellite without Japanese carbon fibers.

Technology
Though weighing only one fourth of iron, carbon fiber has 10 times as much strength and 7 times as much degree of elasticity as iron. The production method is very special. First, continuous fiber called precursor is produced, and the produced precursor is processed for thermal protection. The thermally-protected precursor is sintered and carbonized by inactive gases to produce carbon fibers. The basic production method is the same in every producer. Carbon fiber is closely related to environment concerns. Half of a Boeing 787 is made of carbon fiber reinforced plastic, and it has 20% higher energy efficiency than a passenger plane of the same class. Carbon fiber is growing popular in car production lately, though the application is limited only to high-end cars at present. Although CO2 is emitted in the production process of carbon fibers, but the amount to be eliminated by applying carbon fibers is much bigger.

Spreading usage
The usage of carbon fiber is spreading. As the wind generator grows bigger in size, carbon fiber is increasingly used for the center core of blades to make them stronger. As a big blade needs 1-2 tons of carbon fiber, the market is growing bigger. The market of carbon fiber for airplanes is estimated at 3,000 ton annually, while 3,000-4,000 tons of carbon fibers will supposedly be needed annually for wind generation in the future. A large amount of carbon fiber reinforced plastics will be used for Boeing’s next medium-sized airline B787, and Toray is Boeing’s leading supplier. Tenax is the leading supplier of Airbus that introduced A380 in 2007, about 30% of which is made of carbon fiber reinforce plastics ratio by weight.

Production cost, etc.
Greatly affected by the sluggish economy worldwide, Japan’s monthly production of carbon fiber decreased from 1,200 tons before the Lehman shock to 323 tons in March 2009. In addition, the production delay of Boeing 787s diminished demand and the glut created by overcapacity drove down prices. The market, however, recovered to 900 tons in October 2009 partly because of the diversified usage. Production cost is the most critical factor for spreading carbon fiber. It costs 10 times more than glass fiber and 100 times more than iron to produce carbon fiber. Various approaches are being conducted now. Under the current technology, only one ton of PAN (Polyacrylonitrile) carbon fiber is produced from two tons of precursor. To improve productivity, experiments are being conducted to change the base material from acrylic to another material.

At the same time, fabrication technology offers lots of room for improvement. Toyota’s Lexus scheduled to be introduced toward the end of 2010 uses carbon fiber for the constructional material of its driver’s seat. Toyota introduced new fabrication technology and shortened the production time of a driver’s seat to 10 minutes. However, it is necessary to shorten the production time from 10 minutes to 3 minutes if carbon fiber is used for popular cars. A breakthrough technology is required to spread carbon fiber as a general-purpose material.

Cope with the decreasing fuel oil consumption

Japan’s domestic fuel oil consumption decreased to less than 200 million kiloliters in 2009 for the first time in 22 years. To cope with the decreasing trend, leading oil distributors are busily occupied with branching out into new business fields related to solar cell. A subsidiary of Nippon Oil is scheduled to increase production of silicon wafers by 17% to 240,000 kilowatts in 2010 over the previous year. This company has a 10% share in the global market of highly-efficient silicon wafers for single-crystal solar cells. It currently produces silicon wafers between 170 and 200 micros, and it will introduce a new technology to produce even thinner silicon wafers using diamond to increase competitive edge. Idemitsu Kosan developed a polycarbonate resin that maintains the same strength even after exposure to sunlight and rain for 3,000 hours. The company plans to sell the newly-developed product as a protection material for relay amplifiers. The market of relay amplifiers is estimated to grow four times in 2013. Cosmo Oil is developing polycrystalline silicone using the low-cost mass production technology called zinc reduction method, and it is scheduled to put the technology into operation in 2012. Showa Shell is building a solar cell production plant with an annual production capacity of 900,000 kilowatts with an investment of about 100 million yen. It is quite natural that the fuel consumption will continue decreasing in Japan due to the fear of prolonged sluggish economy and concerns about environment protection. There is not much time left for oil distributors to develop alternative sources of revenue.

Packaging material for foods that virtually blocks oxygen

A Tokyo University professor developed a film with high degree of sealing capacity using plant-derived substances alone in collaboration with Nippon Paper and Kao. He applied bionanofiber solution thinly on the surface of a 30 micro thick starch-derived polylactic acid film. Polylactic acid film without the application of bionanofiber easily allows oxygen to permeate and does not have enough strength. By applying a bionanofiber layer as thin as 0.8 micro on the polylactic surface, he successfully blocked oxygen as much as an existing packaging material made of oil. Fibers are usually in the state of a thick bundle in a plant. He created bionanofibers by dissecting out a bundle into nearly uniform ultrafine fibers, each of which is about 4 nanometers wide. It is possible to economize raw materials because each of the fiber is ultra fine, and polylactic acid can maintain transparency even if bionanofiber is applied on its surface. He plans to put this technology into practical use in a few years and use it for the display film of LCD TVs. He estimates that the price of the ultrafine fiber will be less than 500 yen per kilogram if pulps produced in the paper-forming process are used for the production.