No. 309: Japan’s cold energy supply technology goes to the Maldives (September 15, 2011)

Hitachi Plant Technologies will build a plant to supply cold energy using deep ocean water around the Maldives within 2012 and operate it starting in 2013. The total investment will be 2-3 billion yen. Made up of equipment including pipe arrangements to dip deep ocean water and a refrigeration plant, the special plant for cold energy supply will be built in the vicinity of the Hulhumale Island of the Maldives. The cold energy will be used for the refrigerant of air-conditioners. The company plans to market the system to Southeast countries as a system with less power consumption and carbon dioxide emissions.

The system dips 38,000 cubic meter deep ocean water every day from the depth of 700 m, and water refrigerated by deep ocean water is supplied to manufacturing plants and buildings of the island as the refrigerant of air-conditioners. The temperature of ocean deep water is between 8 and 9 degrees centigrade. The system using ocean deep water can decrease power consumption by more than 60% and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 90,000 tons annually, as compared with the traditional system. Although the initial investment is rather high, it can reduce the running cost including electricity expense considerably.