Winter Snow to Cool Hokkaido Airport in Summer

Source: Japan for Sustainability

Copyright The Tokyo Regional Civil Aviation Bureau

The Tokyo Regional Civil Aviation Bureau of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism has undertaken a project to cool airport buildings using the cold water of melted snow at the New Chitose Airport in Hokkaido. According to the bureau, a mound of snow measuring 100 meters long, 200 meters wide, and 8 to 15 meters tall will be made onsite by collecting plowed snow and covering it for storage until the following summer. The bureau plans to recruit a company that can set up a system to utilize the snow for air conditioning, with the aim of starting operations from the spring of 2010.

As an experiment, from January to March 2008, the bureau had three mounds of snow created, each measuring about 100 meters square and up to 10 meters high. Each was covered with a different insulating material and monitored until early September to determine performance and the extent of snow melt. They decreased in height by about two to four meters while covered, with shrinkage of about 0.5 meters to one meter occurring in midsummer from July to August. Based on these results, the bureau concluded that it is possible to store snow for later use if properly insulated. Plans are in now place to create the snow mounds for storage in the winter of fiscal 2009 for the operation to get started.

The project is expected to result in a reduction of about 2,100 tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually at the New Chitose Airport by using stored snow for air conditioning, as well as reduction of up to 30 percent of the energy currently used to cool both domestic and international terminal buildings.

New Chitose Airport Terminal
http://new-chitose-airport.jp/en/