MHI Adds 2 Environmental Categories to its Annual "Best Innovation Awards"

Best Environmental Product Awards

• ・CO₂ recovery plant featuring world's largest processing capacity: simultaneously protects the environment and increases energy production / Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Engineering, Ltd.
  The award-winning plant recovers carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the combustion gas emitted by thermal power plants. The recovered CO₂ is injected in an oil field and used to increase crude production and recovery. The plant adopts a proprietary process which uses an absorbent jointly developed with Kansai Electric Power Co., Inc. to significantly reduce the amount of energy consumed during CO₂ recovery. MHI has already delivered 13 systems worldwide that recover CO₂ from flue gas for commercial use, giving the Company the top share of the global market in commercial applications in this field. The award-winning plant's CO₂ recovery capacity is a record 4,776 tons per day, allowing for reductions of more than 1.5 million tons of CO₂ annually.
• ・Energy-independent sewage-sludge incinerator: significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions / Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Environmental & Chemical Engineering Co., Ltd.
  The award-winner is Japan's first energy-independent sewage-sludge incinerator that generates more energy than the amount of power consumed by the plant. This is achieved by incorporating into a conventional sewage-sludge incinerator a binary power generation system (manufactured by Turboden S.p.A.) that uses the heat and vaporization of a medium with a low boiling point. This innovative incinerator reduces nitrous oxide (N2O), a greenhouse gas emanating from sewage sludge, and, including reduced power, is capable of cutting CO₂ emissions by 50% compared to conventional systems. The first incinerator of this type is currently under construction in Tokyo. Use of this incineration plant can reduce CO₂ by approximately 120,000 tons per year.
• ・Centrifugal chillers using low-GWP refrigerant across full capacity range / Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Thermal Systems, Ltd.
  The award-winning centrifugal chillers are the first of their kind from a Japanese manufacturer to adopt a low-GWP refrigerant (global warming potential close to CO₂ and 1/1300 the conventional level) in response to the "Kigali Amendment" to the Montreal Protocol*. The chillers are manufactured in two series: the small capacity range "ETI-Z" and the large capacity range "GART-ZE." As a result, MHI Thermal Systems is Japan's first producer of low-GWP centrifugal chillers for the complete capacity range. The volume of CO₂ emissions deriving from power consumption during operation is approximately 40% less than the level of MHI's products of 20 years ago. Conversion of all centrifugal chillers in Japan to MHI Thermal Systems' low-GWP chillers would result in a reduction in CO₂ by roughly 7.7 million tons per annum.

Best Environmental Practice Award

• ・Creation of business model for recycling compound materials used in aircraft manufacture / Aircraft, Defense & Space domain: Commercial Airplanes Division
  Use of carbon-fiber compound materials in the aircraft industry is increasing, but producing carbon fiber consumes large amounts of energy and places a burden on the environment from processing the resulting waste. In response, MHI devised a method for extracting carbon fiber from compound material waste and, by means of fiber morphology, confirmed that the recycled carbon fiber has utility value equivalent to new fiber. MHI was also the first company to create a value chain involving recycling business operators to extract recycled carbon fiber from waste. This has reduced energy consumption in carbon fiber manufacturing by around 10%, and with recycling use of all the Company's approximately 1,000 tons of compound waste material, allows for reduction of nearly 10,000 tons of CO₂ per annum.

The "Best Innovation Awards" is an award system for recognizing original new products, services, technologies and businesses within the MHI Group. The program has been conducted annually since 2003. In 2017, including the four awards in the newly introduced environmental categories, a total of 18 awards was presented.

Note
* The amendment, adopted in October 2016 in the Rwandan capital city of Kigali, calls for new restrictions applied to alternative hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs).