Japanese Wood Recycling Law Spurs Research

The Japanese steelmaking conglomerate NKK Corp. has announced that it is “exploring the possibility of employing construction-waste scrap wood to feed a power generation boiler.”

The company, which has pioneered using scrap plastics as a substitute for coke in steel blast furnaces, is developing what it describes as “a circulating fluidized-bed boiler, which will use scrap wood as well as mixtures of wood and plastics as fuel, with a 31 percent power generation efficiency.”

While conducting trial operations, NKK will study how to collect at least 50,000 tons of scrap wood each year in Japan—the required amount to run the power generation boiler on a commercial basis.

The project is spurred in part by new legislation in Japan on construction material recycling that will be enacted in the spring of 2002. The rules require the recycling of scrap wood at some construction sites.