Environmentally Conscious Business Management

Column

Contribution to Global Warming Measures through Destruction of Chlorofluorocarbon

The global warming has a great impact on human life and ecosystems of countries regardless whether they are developed or under development.

The DOWA group is committed to contributing to prevent global warming and destruction of the Ozone layer, by reducing CO2 emissions from its own plants and offices, properly recovering and destroying CFC and CFC’S substitutes from used home electric appliances and automobiles.

Recovery of CFC

Greenhouse effect gases such as CFC and HCFC are used as a cooling media of refrigerators and air conditioning, and as a heat insulator in things such as Styrofoam. Included in these gases is HFC with greenhouse effect of 12 to 12,000 times of CO2 and CFC of 4,600 to 14,000 times.

Eco-Recycle, Act-B Recycling and Auto Recycle Akita collect CFC and CFC substitutes from used electric appliances and cars in a safe and proper manner. Among others, Eco-Recycling collects not only CFC from used home electric appliances but also CFC from heat insulators from bodies and doors of refrigerators when they are destroyed.

Disposal of CFC by Destroying It

The DOWA group has been engaged in destroying these greenhouse effect gasses since the former Ministry of the Environment and Akita Prefecture out-sourced the business of destroying greenhouse effect gases to us in 1996. DOWA adopted a rotary kiln method that takes advantage of heat generated when wastes are burnt to destroy greenhouse effect gasses. This method does not require additional energy to destroy these gases.

99% of CFC can be processed under 1,000℃ or higher.

Based on the destruction test results by DOWA, the CFC Destruction Processing Guideline Using Rotary Kiln was prepared. This has contributed to disseminate the knowledge of how to process CFC.

At present Eco-System Akita, Eco-System Chiba and Eco-System Sanyo obtained permits from the government to handle destroying and pyrolysis processing of CFC through effective use of heat from incinerating of wastes.

In 2008, the DOWA group recovered and processed CFC and CFC substitutes that corresponds to 94,000 t converted to CO2.