Trash Energy: Another Source for Tokyo Hydrogen

Akihabara News (Tokyo) — Ways2H Inc. and its shareholder and partner Japan Blue Energy Co. (JBEC) have announced the completion of a Tokyo facility that will convert waste materials into hydrogen energy. The energy will be used for power generation and fuel cell mobility to meet the demand for renewable hydrogen energy.

Ways2H specializes in a carbon-neutral process that extracts hydrogen energy from waste such as “municipal solid waste, medical refuse, plastics, and organics” without incineration.

The Tokyo facility was completed in cooperation with Chiyoda Kenko, Toda Corporation, and Tokyu Construction. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government was also involved in the partnership, as well as researchers from Tokyo University of Science.

Once the waste is gathered, it will be “heated to a high temperature and converted into a gas, from which pure hydrogen is extracted.” This new process will lead hydrogen production away from fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas.

Ways2H CEO Jean-Louis Kindler commented, “Producing renewable hydrogen from waste is a key pathway for increasing global clean energy supplies while addressing climate change and the global waste crisis… This facility was built to support Tokyo’s pioneering efforts on clean energy and waste reduction, and contributes to Japan’s clean hydrogen and carbon reduction goals.”

The energy produced by the new facility will be “enough to fuel ten passenger vehicles or 25 fuel-cell e-bikes” by processing “one ton of dried sewage sludge per day, to generate forty to fifty kilograms of hydrogen.”

There have been other efforts to promote the waste-to-hydrogen clean energy movement. A team of Welsh and Indian researchers based at Swansea University are developing a process called photoreforming that uses sunlight to kill viruses and convert non-recyclables into hydrogen energy.

Another example comes from the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology. There, bacteria is used to break down food waste from the institute’s cafeteria and produce clean hydrogen gas.

Naoki Dowaki, JBEC president and Ways2H board member, affirmed, “Renewable hydrogen is an important clean energy fuel for Tokyo and the world.”
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