Japan plans to push forward the verification test in June. While watching the support system of the Japanese government, it will partially promote practicality after 2026. The ceramic industry, including glass, and the earth-rock product manufacturing industry rank fourth among all industries in Japan in terms of carbon dioxide emissions. AGC will accelerate the establishment of relevant technologies with a view to improving the ammonia supply chain to reduce carbon dioxide emissions during manufacturing.
AGC will conduct ammonia combustion tests at the Yokohama Technical Center using the actual production line. Storage tanks are set up in the technical center land. The company is developing the burner with Japanese industrial gas giant Dayang Nippon Acid. A way to rapidly increase the temperature of a glass melting furnace and efficiently melt raw materials while suppressing nitrogen oxides generated when ammonia is used as a fuel will be studied.
AGC will start the demonstration of using ammonia to melt glass raw materials (pictures provided by the company).
Glass needs to be melted by heating silica sand and other raw materials to 1400 to 1600 degrees Celsius in a refractory brick furnace. And then slowly cool to form a plate. Melting requires burning heavy oil and natural gas, so it emits carbon dioxide. From the point of view of general flat glass manufacturing, each ton of glass emits about 0.5 to 1 ton of carbon dioxide. Ammonia will be used to replace a portion of these fuels.
Japan Institute of Industrial Technology and Tohoku University will also participate in the demonstration test, which will be implemented as a commissioned project of Japan New Energy Industry Technology Development Agency (NEDO). Not only glass, but also related topics will be verified in order to be widely used in industrial furnaces. Strive to establish a larger 1 MW ammonia burner technology by March 2026. It is estimated that the budget of NEDO's demonstration test will be about 2 billion yen in five years.
AGC will discuss how to use ammonia based on experimental results and procurement costs. If all fossil fuels are converted to ammonia, carbon dioxide emissions during production can be reduced by 70 to 80%. Yoshinori Hirai, president of the company, said, "How should we skillfully use gases that do not emit carbon dioxide?"? It will also promote the research and development of CCUS (Carbon Dioxide Capture, Utilization and Storage).
Estimates from the Japan Resources and Energy Agency in
AGC's plant show that if 100% of ammonia from natural gas is burned, the cost of power generation will be 23.5 yen per kilowatt-hour (as of 2018), more than twice that of coal. Ammonia from fossil fuels emits carbon dioxide when it is produced, and measures such as capture and storage are needed to achieve net zero emissions. Surveys have shown that in the future, it will become necessary to use renewable energy to produce "green ammonia" and so on, but the production cost will be several times that of ammonia from fossil fuels.
Other businesses are also looking to change fuels and feedstocks. Nippon Sheet Glass will make a case for switching to raw materials that can curb carbon dioxide emissions. It will be tested whether the raw material called "dry lime" can be used to replace the raw material "dolomite" used to improve the quality of glass products. Dolomite produces a lot of carbon dioxide when it melts at high temperatures. Dry lime, on the other hand, reduces carbon dioxide in manufacturing and requires less energy to burn to melt raw materials. For the first time in the world,
plate glass has successfully used hydrogen, which is also concerned as a new generation fuel like ammonia, in glass manufacturing. However, the company believes that this alone is difficult to promote decarbonization, and will also promote the development of a wide range of technologies.
& nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; Under the trend of global decarbonization, the trend of large automobile enterprises to promote carbon dioxide emission reduction in the whole supply chain has been strengthened. For example, German Volkswagen requires parts manufacturers to achieve net zero emission in the manufacture of some pure electric vehicle (EV). Of the energy-derived carbon dioxide emissions of Japan's industrial sector in
2020 (356 million tons), the emissions of ceramics industry and earth-rock products manufacturing industry were 28.1 million tons, accounting for 8%, ranking fourth after steel, chemical industry and machinery.
Japan's domestic supply of ammonia and hydrogen is currently inadequate. In the context of continuing to explore how to decarbonize glass manufacturing throughout the supply chain, it is necessary to accelerate the establishment of new technologies and cost reduction to seek optimal solutions.
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