No. 114: The scheduled largest environment city in the Tokyo metropolitan area (January 2, 2012)

Business trend

A plan to construct the largest environment city in a 170,000-square-meter land is in progress. This is a so-called smart city made up mainly of 1,500 apartments complete with commercial facilities and hospitals. It is based on such IT-based advanced technologies as photovoltaic generation equipment, a system to control power consumption of each household and street lighting, and car sharing. Nomura Real Estate Development and Mitsubishi Corp. will work together on this project. The 170,000-square-land is an old factory site of Asahi Glass. 

Each household will be equipped with the home energy management system (HEMS) that controls electric usage and warns about excessive usage. The city is divided into sections, each of which is connected through information network to manage and optimize power consumption. Each household will be able to purchase high-voltage power at a lower unit price as a package deal independently than the unit price it pays for low-voltage power. A photovoltaic generation system will be adopted to generate power for areas for community use. Mitsubishi Motors will help the project with the sharing system of electric vehicles. The East Japan Great Earthquake prompted companies involved in the energy business to draw plans for more efficient use of energy and formulate measures for emergency power demand.

No. 113: A more advanced energy-saving office building from Daiwa House (December 19, 2011)

Daiwa House will launch a more advanced energy-saving office building that utilizes as much outside light as possible. The company has already put the office building that conserves electricity by 50% from the level in 1990 by incorporating photovoltaic generation and heat insulation. The new office building can reduce electricity by more than 50%. It employs lighting blinds, light ducts, and double-sided light-emitting diodes based on the light guide plate of liquid crystal display. Light diffused by the lighting blind spreads to the four corners of a room, and light ducts to take in outside light are installed in the space that cannot get outside light. The light duct was developed by Sumitomo 3M.

The LED lighting was developed jointly by KoizumiLighting Technology and Sumitomo Chemical. It employs the edge light system that diffuses light using the light guide plate. It helps the light realize more natural feeling and make people feel brighter because it is double-sided illumination. It is automatically controlled by the illuminance sensor, and it can run without emitting light for four hours a day. Theoretically, it is possible to maintain the necessary level of luminance for 9.9 hours on average a day. On the rooftop, the new building has solar panels with a generation capacity of 10 kW to supply power enough to operate the lighting and air-conditioning.

No. 112: Applying TRON to the smart city in alliance with European research Institutes (December 10, 2011)

YRP Ubiquitous Networking Laboratory sponsored by Fujitsu, Hitachi, and Sony will play the central role in the research to apply the Real-Time Operating System Nucleus (TRON) that Dr. Takeshi Sakamura proposed in 1984 to the smart city. The laboratory will establish an organization with government-affiliated research institutes and companies in Europe including Siemens of Germany and ST Microelectronics of Switzerland to put TRON-based technologies into practical use. It has already reached an agreement with a Chinese city on the technological cooperation on TRON. It will help the Chinese city establish a TRON-based security system that covers the entire city including the historical management of pharmaceuticals and foods. Likewise, it will provide the know-how on incorporating TRON in various kinds of sensors to European organizations.

The smart meter (next-generation power meter) is used in the smart city to network various devices to exchange data in search of the optimal power supply. A sophisticated operating system is vital to know the city environment in real time, and TRON is regarded as the best operating system. According to a Japanese public research company, the world smart meter market will grow more than three times over the level in 2009 to 1,300 billion yen in 2020. TRON will have increasingly intensifying competition with Android of Google and Windows of Microsoft. TRON plans to differentiate it from other two operating systems by focusing on devices that do not need a large processing ability. At present, no clear winner in the world’s standard of the operating system for sophisticated sensors vital to the smart city.

No. 111: Building an environment-conscious sewage system in disaster-stricken districts (November 9, 2011)

The efforts to build an environment-conscious sewage system in collaboration with the local governments hit by the Great East Japan Earthquake are growing widespread. Sekisui Chemical will collaborate with Sendai city to build a system that creates hot water using the exhaust heat from the sewage pipe that is around 20 degrees centigrade all the year round. Using Sekisui’s technology on the production of resin sewage pipes, the system will take out heat using the resin sheets on the bottom of the pipes. It is possible to install the system without breaking the existing sewage pipes. Metawater and Kesennuma city will together build a system to utilize a large amount of fishery wastes from seafood processing plants. The system mixes the wastes with sewage sludge and generates electricity using heat and methane gas generated in the fermentation process. The generated power will be used in the plant.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism has positioned these two projects as government-supported research projects. The two local governments and private companies involved will build equipment for substantiative experiments. After examining the results of these experiments, the government is scheduled to expand these efforts to other local governments. About 40% of the 150 sewage treatment plants were destroyed in the Fukushima disaster, and the damages are estimated to be several hundred billion yen.

In addition to these local governments and private companies, Japan IBM is studying the construction of an eco town with Sendai city, and Boston Consulting Group is working on building a seafood processing plant on the seacoast that uses renewable energy in collaboration with Iwate Prefecture. Hitachi submitted a proposal on an environment-conscious town to more than 10 local governments, while Fujitsu made the same kind of proposal to a prefecture on the coast of the Sea of Japan.  

No. 110: Using a sewage plant as the base of resources recycling (November 7, 2011)

Subsidized by Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Toyohashi University of Technology will start a substantiative experiment of a system that uses a sewage plant as the base of resources recycling for effective utilization of biomass and carbon dioxide with an investment of 600 million yen in 2014. In the experiment, the research team will produce biogas and fertilizer from sewage sludge and waste. The generated biogas will be used for power generation, and the generated carbon dioxide will be used as an agent to facilitate the photosynthesis of farm products and seaweeds.

The generated power will be used to run the equipment, the generated heat in power generation to dry sewage sludge, and the generated carbon dioxide to operate the cultivation facilities inside the plant. Facilitating the photosynthesis is expected to increase the yield by 30%. Biomass will be solidified and distributed to local farmers as fertilizer. In the experiment, the research team will study how much the system will be effective to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and the economic potential of the system. The local gas company will provide the elementary technology for the production of biogas and fertilizer and the facilitation of the photosynthesis. Besides such nationwide companies as Sinfonia, local companies including TBRCorp. and Ishiguro Group will participate in the experiment. The preparation for the experiment will start in Toyokawa Water Purification Center late this year. 

No. 109: Water business in Japan and the world (28) (November 1, 2011)

Building a society that does not waste water

Water is a finite resource. In order to prepare for the decreased safety of water utilization caused by climate change, we need to build a society that does not waste water. Climate change causes not only a drought but also a flood as we see in the ongoing disaster in Thailand. If we set water in water reservoir and underground water apart for later use by virtue of effective utilization of rainwater and reclaimed water, we can secure stable water supply even in a drought. Tokyo uses 426 cubic meters every day that is equivalent to 3.4 times bigger than the volume of a Tokyo Dome. About 70% of the 426 cubic meters is daily life water at households.

The water amount from the tap is 12 liters per minute, and you can reduce the amount to 5 liters if you use a cup when you brush your teeth. If you use a bucket instead of running water when you wash you car, you can reduce the water amount by 210 liters. Washing dishes by hands needs only one tenth of water amount needed by a dishwasher. If you wash dishes by your hands after three meals a day, you can economize as much as 300 liters a day. Demand for water-saving apparatus has been growing lately.

According to a questionnaire survey conducted the government, 39% of the respondents wish to buy a water-saving toilet system, 25% express the desire to buy a water-saving washer, and 19% think about introducing equipment of rainwater utilization. Flushing toilet has the larges share of 28% of water consumption in a household. It is followed by bath that accounts for 24%, cooking 23%, and laundry 17%. A Tokyoite uses about 240 liters of water in a day. It is possible to reduce water consumption greatly by using water-saving equipment and learning the behavior to economize water.

Japan can take pride in the state-of-the-art membrane technology and the management of water leakage. Besides, Japan can spread its traditional rules and customs for water saving worldwide. For example, water sprinkling on the road is one of Japan’s traditions to cool down the street. Whatever measures are taken, the attitude and behavior of each person are the strong weaponry for effective and efficient usage of water. (The end)

No. 108: Water business in Japan and the world (27) (October 31, 2011)

Effective utilization of rainwater and reclaimed water

Increasing and expanding the use of general service water is one of the measures for effective utilization of water resources. General purpose water is rainwater and reclaimed water. It was in 1978 that general service water attracted wide attention in Japan. Fukuoka Prefecture had a severe drought in 1978, and the nation and local governments prompted the introduction of general service water. In Fukuoka Prefecture, it is regulated by an ordinance that a large building with more than a certain area of floor space should use general service water for flush toilets. The Tokyo metropolitan government also asks developers of buildings bigger than a certain level to use general service water for flush toilets and install a system for rainwater infiltration.  

The current sewage system is generally designed to cope with a rainfall of 50 mm per hour, but unexpected torrential downpours occur frequently these days because of global warming and the heat-island phenomenon, causing reverse flow in the urban district. Tokyo Sky Tree in Tokyo scheduled to be open next spring has an underground rainwater reservoir with a capacity of 2,635 cubic meters. In addition to this underground reservoir, the district where Tokyo Sky Tree is located has more than 300 reservoirs to prevent a flood caused by torrential downpours.  

The government estimates that if all single-family houses in the Kanto area have a rainwater reservoir with a capacity of 0.5 cubit meters, rainwater of 270 million cubic meters will be retained. This volume is about 7% of the total water supply amount in this area. Should half of this volume be used for daily life water, the volume of water restriction will be mitigated by about 5%. Using rainwater and reclaimed water for water spray, car washes, artificial cooling, and fire fighting contributes to building a society strong against drought and flood. At the same time, it will reduce the load of sewage treatment facilities and contribute to the improvement of water quality. (To be continued)