NKK Promoting Comprehensive Recycling
Operations Aimed at Zero-Emissions
NKK has been promoting a wide range of recycling operations as part of its environmental solutions business to help communities realize zero-emissions recycling. In October 1996, the company pioneered the recycling of industrial waste plastics into blast furnace feed. That was expanded to include municipal waste plastics (containers and packages except PET bottles) in April 2000. These operations have been put on a steady business track to record favorable sales in fiscal 2001.
In April this year, NKK, in collaboration with its joint venture partners, launched recycling operations for televisions, air conditioners, refrigerators and washing machines. The move coincided with the enactment of a law mandating the recycling of the four electrical appliances. The business is advantageous in that most of the recovered materials, including plastics, are being reused in NKK's steel production processes nearby.
In the latest development, NKK has decided to move into the PET (polyethylene terephthalate)bottle recycling business jointly with NK Kankyo Corp., its environmental recycling subsidiary. The project calls for building a recycling plant with a processing capacity of 10,000 tons (some 200 million bottles) a year within NKK's Keihin Works. The plant, slated to go into operation in April 2002, will process (by sorting, crushing and washing) collected bottles and produce about 8,000 tons of PET flakes a year, which will be fed back into textile manufacturing and other uses. Such items as bottle caps and labels that will be separated as residue during the recycling process can be used as a reducing agent in blast furnaces, thereby achieving zero-emissions resource recycling.
NKK will engage in the PET bottle recycling business on consignment from the Container and Packaging Recycling Association of Japan, which will supply collected bottles to registered operators in a tender. The Keihin area, where the new plant will operate, is said to discharge a vast amount of PET bottles, which is one reason behind NKK's decision to enter this business.
In another move, NKK has also initiated demonstration tests to recycle construction-waste scrap wood similarly for blast furnace feed. The governmental NEDO-aided project uses a test plant with a 3-ton-per-hour processing capacity installed at NKK's Keihin Works. The plant will crush scrap wood -- through removing foreign matter such as wires and nails -- into wood chips(less than 10mm in size) which will be fed into blast furnaces as a substitute for coke by means of pneumatic transportation.
The three-year test project aims to verify the commercial feasibility of the scrap wood crushing and pneumatic transportation system, with the focus on its long-term operational stability, effects on blast furnace operations and other factors.
Japan will enact another law requiring that three designated construction wastes (asphalt, concrete and scrap wood) be recycled in April 2002. While the national annual disposal volume of scrap wood exceeds 6 million tons, only 40% have been recycled up until now, with the rest disposed of through simple incineration or landfill. NKK, having established resource utilization efficiency as high as 80% with the already commercialized waste plastics recycling system for blast furnace feed, aims to establish the similarly efficient, mass-volume recycling system for scrap wood, thus meeting society's need for resource conservation.
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