Vertical garages are widely used in cities, but have you ever seen a mechanical, fully automatic bicycle parking system? It’s an underground, tree-shaped vertical garage where parking takes just 5 seconds, saving space while enabling large-scale automated bike storage.
Solar matrix layouts are common, but have you seen such a “formation”? — hundreds of heliostats constantly track the sun, greedily absorbing sunlight, then reflecting it onto a receiver tower, ultimately converting solar energy into electricity and steam.
Discarded home appliances, mobile phones, and computer equipment can yield gold with 99.99% purity from their electronic components, while the copper slag produced during gold extraction can be recycled into new copper. These novel and creative ideas were unveiled at the 2012 China-Japan Environmental Energy Project Matchmaking Conference, leaving the attending Zhejiang entrepreneurs wide-eyed.
“Japan is a country with very limited resources, and their pursuit of environmentally friendly energy is extremely dedicated. Their ability to seek business opportunities in the field of environmental regeneration is worth our reference,” remarked Ye Zhiqing, Chairman of Zhejiang Leye Photovoltaic Co., Ltd., with emotion.
When introducing the automatic bicycle parking system, Mr. Dohi Koichiro, Chairman of Japan JFE Engineering (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., deeply impressed the Chinese entrepreneurs present. The automatic bicycle parking system built by Japan JFE Engineering is a tree-shaped vertical underground garage. Users only need an IC card to automatically store and retrieve their bikes, operating on the same principle as the vertical parking systems for cars commonly used domestically. Such vertical bike garages are very popular in land-scarce Japan, with over 30 already built. Guests remarked that China also has a large number of electric scooters and bicycles, which are often parked haphazardly, indicating huge market potential for such parking systems.
The metal recycling business of Suzhou Tonghe Resource Comprehensive Utilization Co., Ltd. attracted Liu Rongmiao, President of Zhejiang Rongmei Investment Holding Co., Ltd., who was present. The Japanese parent company of Suzhou Tonghe is DOWA Holdings Co., Ltd., Japan’s largest waste treatment company, with an annual processing capacity of 1 million tons and the ability to extract 22 types of metals from waste.
Masuda Tatsuya, Chairman of Suzhou Tonghe, introduced that the company’s resource regeneration technology is very advanced, achieving an industrial waste recycling rate of 50% and a general waste recycling rate of 20%. The company recovers discarded home appliances, mobile phones, and other products from electronics factories, disassembling them to obtain copper, iron, and resin materials. Other electronic components are sent to wet-processing plants, where 99.99% pure gold can be extracted, with the plant’s monthly gold production capacity reaching 200 kilograms. The copper slag generated during gold extraction is reused to produce new copper, and the remaining waste is ultimately sent to landfills.