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ENGLISH ISSUE BIOGAS JOURNAL | AUTUMN_2023 With a height of 300 meters, Abeno Harukas is the tallest building in Japan. It houses a biogas plant in the basement. dustrial food waste. But this approach can come with its challenges. Arita Hirotaka, from Dispo Co. Ltd., can attest to that. The waste disposal company’s logo, a prominent “I love Recycle” with a red heart, can be spotted from far off on the white facility located on the outskirts of Obihiro. There are garbage trucks and tankers on the premises. Dispo disposes of commercial waste in Obihiro and the surrounding communities. In 2017, the company commissioned a 150-kW biogas plant from Tsuchiya Dairy Equipment & Systems to process organic waste. “Until May 2022, the plant performed exceptionally well, generating over 1,100 megawatt-hours of electrical power, surpassing our expectations in some years,” the operations manager explained. “The depackers work well and the substrate can be easily organized.” A manufacturer of potato chips and a company that makes sweets out of red bean paste work in the vicinity. There are also dairy plants and dairy farms. “Going through the biogas plant is faster and cheaper than composting the materials.” Besides that, the waste heat heats a small greenhouse with tomatoes and lettuce which sell well to local supermarkets, especially in winter. Nevertheless, the feed-in tariff for the generated electrical energy remains the cornerstone of the plant’s financing. Therefore, the operational disruption experienced between May and October 2022 was all the more frustrating. “We mixed too much whey into the substrate,” Arita Hirotaka candidly recounted. That led to an over acidification in the fermenter. “So, we had to empty the digester, and in the process, we also removed 120 tons of solid residues and covered the concrete with a plastic layer to protect it from acid attack,” Hirotaka reflected. However, thanks to the guaranteed feed-in tariff for 20 years, he is confident that the plant will be profitable. The company even plans to invest in a second one, which would provide electrical energy for self-consumption due to the unreliable grid connection. Biogas Plant in a Skyscraper Masara Komori is well acquainted with food waste in the biogas plant. “I check the plant every day.” The head of building technology at Japan’s tallest skyscraper, standing at 300 meters, wears a simple tie with a grey technician’s jacket and horn-rimmed glasses. However, his workplace, Abeno Harukas in Downtown Osaka, boasts several superlatives: on the lower floors, the Kintetsu chain operates the largest department store in Japan, spanning 100,000 square meters, including a massive grocery section. Besides that, the building has 50 restaurants, an art museum, a railway station and office space in 300,000 square meters of space. Masara Komori is one of 8,000 people working in the building. But, contrary to everyone else, he has a key to every door. And the engineer always knows where he is. He hurries purposefully through the corridors of the five basement floors, past employees who, slightly bent forward, push rattling trolleys full of goods in front of them, hurry to the meeting point of the cleaning crew, or in their lime green uniforms to their workplace as elevator operators. 52
BIOGAS JOURNAL | AUTUMN_2023 ENGLISH ISSUE Abeno Harukas Building: The organic waste from around 50 restaurants and waste from the grocery department of the department store are shredded in this room. In the Abeno Harukas Building, some restaurants use hot water from the boiler operated with methane from the building’s own biogas plant. The nighttime street scene in Tokyo illustrates, among other things, why Japan has such a high demand for electricity. Biogas for the Hot Water Boiler A widely ramified network of sprinkler systems and spotless supply lines winds under the ceiling. One of them belongs to a boiler for the hot water of some of the restaurants in the building. This is operated with 60 cubic meters of methane per day from the building’s own biogas plant. It is located on the third basement floor. After countless steel doors and hundreds of meters of corridors made of light-colored concrete, Masara Komori finally stands in front of it. After the organic waste from the restaurants and the grocery department has been collected and shredded, it ends up here in a 34 cubic meter silo, where it is mixed with water and pumped into each of the two 106 cubic meter digesters. To avoid unpleasant odors, an ozone filter is used. “Overall, the system operates smoothly, but occasionally eggshells or highly fibrous waste clog the pipes and pumps. We simply need to improve the training of our staff,” Komori concludes. The plant, that cost approximately 200,000 euros, was half-funded by the Japanese government. The hot water provided to users is free of charge. “In return, we are reducing waste quantities and methane emissions,” says Komori. In addition, his employer gets significant public attention for the biogas plant located in one of the world’s tallest buildings, and that is perfectly fine. After all, Masara Komori and his team demonstrate that biogas technology can indeed work effectively in urban settings. Author Klaus Sieg Freelance Journalist Rothestr. 66 · 22655 Hamburg 00 49 171/6 39 42 62 klaus@siegtext.de www.siegtext.de 53
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