Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions Associated with Manufacturing : Case Study Archives

Energy-saving measures for compressors and air conditioners (Shinano Fujitsu Ltd.) (FY2009)

Shinano Fujitsu Ltd. (The Fujitsu Component Group) has been focusing its efforts on energy savings for its compressors and air conditioners, which are responsible for about 40% of total power consumption.

Compressors :
reducing pressure, controlling number of units used, eliminating air leakage.

Air conditioners :
reducing air-conditioner load by installing waste-heat ducts and insulated jackets on equipment and a rooftop watering system.

Thanks to these and other measures including improving the operational efficiency of boilers, fuel-oil demand decreased and the plant as whole was able to reduce its yearly CO2 emissions by 1,400 tons.

Substantially reducing CO2 emissions by modifying electrical storage and heat-source facilities (Fujitsu Semiconductor Ltd.) (FY2009)

Fujitsu Semiconductor Ltd.'s Iwate Plant and Fujitsu Semiconductor Technology Inc. have been implementing measures to address temporary losses in electrical power^*1.

They installed electric double-layer capacitors, which can store (and discharge) large amounts of electrical charge, and implemented measures to optimize the operations and improve the efficiency of heat-emitting equipment such as refrigerators and boilers. These strategies have enabled both to substantially reduce their use of fuel oil below the previous systems, and they achieved a combined reduction in CO2 emissions of 38,000 tons a year.

*1 the electric power supply can drop temporarily due to phenomena such as lightning. It can cause significant damage in plants operating advanced ICT equipment.

Promoting the Visibility of Individual Businesses' CO2 Emissions (Fujitsu Oyama Factory) (FY2008)

When attempting to reduce energy usage in factories, it is important to address it not only from the equipment aspect but also from the process aspect in the production and other departments. To do this, Fujitsu's Oyama Factory installed meters to measure the cumulative power consumption on the primary side of the distribution panels in its main production and testing equipment (in 25% of the total) in order to make the amount of electricity being used for production visible.

Rendering the electricity consumption of the most powerhungry departments visible in this way enables us to set energy reduction targets, monitor progress, and keep our day-to-day energysaving activities invigorated.

Reviewing Heating Systems and Converting Equipment to Save Energy (Fujitsu Kansai Systems Laboratory) (FY2008)

Fujitsu Kansai Systems Laboratory kept the number of heating units down by turning its computer room into an office.

It also converted a heat storage water tank to produce chilled water for its air conditioning system at night, when electricity is cheaper. This enabled it not only to reduce its annual CO2 emissions by 74 tons but also to save on its electricity costs.

This initiative won the laboratory a prize for effort in fiscal 2008 as one of the case studies on improvements to the operation and control of heat storage systems collected by the Heat Pump & Thermal Storage Technology Center of Japan.

Project to Improve Air Conditioning Efficiency in Data Centers (Fujitsu Shikoku Systems Limited) (FY2008)

Fujitsu Shikoku Systems Limited carries out regional systems ntegration, package development and outsourcing services. There is a data center (IDC) in the Kochi Fujitsu Technoport building that the company occupies. A through-floor air conditioning system is used in the data center's IDC Machine Room to cool machines such as host computers and servers efficiently, but the equipment was being operated with the specifications unchanged from when the facility had been constructed, with the racks' air intakes and outlets facing each other.

Starting in fiscal 2008, the company addressed this issue by optimizing the position and number of outlet grilles in the floor and intakes in the ceiling so as to adjust the airflow balance to suit the way in which the racks were populated. This increased the air conditioning efficiency and allowed the system to be run with fewer units and the operational settings to be adjusted and relaxed.

As a result, the building's total CO2 emissions dropped by around 7% compared with fiscal 2007.

Energy Saving Efforts at Computer Centers and in Air Conditioning Systems (FY2007)

We perform activities from software development to hardware computer system verification, evaluation, and quality assurance at the Fujitsu, Ltd. Numazu plant. These activities take place at the computer center at the plant. Although we have adopted the traditional through-the-fl oor air conditioning to cool the computers (large-scale computers, servers, and other systems) efficiently at this computer center, starting in fiscal 2007 we have adopted the following "energy saving tune-ups" which aim at even further reductions in air condition energy consumption. These aim at increasing the efficiency of the air conditioning systems and we have reduced the number of operating air conditioning units and optimized and eased the operating conditions (settings).

- Use of an appropriate air conditioning capacity for the thermal load generated by the computers (avoiding excess or insufficient cooling capacity)

- Review of the computer layout (unification of the intake and exhaust directions and the layout in the parallel direction for the consolidated layout and air fl ow)

- Modification of the fl oor air vent positions (changed to the computer intake vent side) and selection of the intake vent type (slit, punch-formed, and other grill types).

- Implementation of prior studies using air fl ow and temperature distribution simulation

Fujitsu America (USA)

Fujitsu America Inc. (FAI), has been providing companies grouped in the area surrounding Sunnyvale Campus (California) since August 2007 with a data center using fuel cells as the power source, supplying about 50% of the center's air-conditioning power requirements, that is some 10% of total campus power requirements. This has reduced annual CO2 emissions by 781 tons (the equivalent of 164 acres of forest) and annual NOx emissions by 2.8 tons (the equivalent of 146 cars).