2024 Sustainable Taiwan Expo successfully concluded at Kaohsiung Exhibition Center. Attracting 130 companies and more than 25,000 professionals from around the world, the three-day event comprehensively demonstrated Taiwan's innovative breakthroughs in sustainable technology and circular economy. The exhibition became an important bridge to promote international cooperation, creating potential business opportunities worth more than NT$100 million. It helped companies expand markets and promoted sustainable development. With the theme of "Recycled Metals, Green Future," Metal Industries Research & Development Centre (MIRDC) focused on recycling materials and green processes, displaying 19 technological achievements, all of which provided industry with comprehensive solutions for circular economy.
In terms of recycling metals, MIRDC showcased a number of technological achievements in recycling processes of metal material. Taking “Segregation Purification Technique of Recycled Aluminum” as an example, the technology can increase the purity of aluminum by up to six times. It not only effectively improves utilization rate of raw materials, but also closes the gap in domestic refinery technology for high-purity aluminum. This will reduce raw material costs of the targets, and expand application markets of recycled aluminum targets. In addition, “Dissimilar Materials Joining Technology on Recycled Aluminum” is the technology used in the country's first low-pressure foam casting equipment for recycled aluminum. This technology processes recycled aluminum to produce lightweight and highly functional materials by using low-pressure foam casting, and it produces porous material that have sound absorption, heat insulation, vibration reduction and electromagnetic shielding properties, increasing the added-value by five to ten times.
In terms of a green future, hydrogen energy is the core energy source for net-zero carbon emissions. “Enduring-High-Efficiency Combustion System for Industrial Furnace (EHE Combustion System)” technology demonstrated by MIRDC at the exhibition attracted much attention. The technology combines self-preheating burners with Intelligent Burner Operating Principle (IntelliBurn), and it precisely adjusts air/fuel ratio and heat-exchange efficiency to optimize energy-saving effects of industrial furnaces. Therefore, it reaches 72% recycle rate of waste heat and 25% energy-saving rate, and it also maintains over 95% heat-exchange efficiency, and which is a break-through of energy-saving limitation of traditional industrial furnaces. Meanwhile, “High-efficiency Boiling Tube Manufacturing Process” breaks through the limitation of using smooth pipes in traditional domestic heat exchangers. It uses powder sintering to create a porous structure, and which greatly increases metal surface area and enhances heat transfer efficiency by two to five times, and thereby significantly reducing energy loss. The related technologies are expected to inject new momentum into new energy utilization and industrial energy saving.
This exhibition not only deepens sustainable supply chain cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region, but also promotes international technology exchanges. Yung-Hsiang Lai, President of MIRDC, said that they will continue to provide technical and service support to assist domestic metal and related industries in accelerating green transition. MIRDC works to reduce the burden on the industry, and jointly achieve the goal of net-zero carbon emissions.