Abstract
The Great East Japan Earthquake occurred on March 11, 2011, and the huge tsunami that followed brought with it great suffering in areas along the the east coast of the Tohoku region. The tsunami swept away people, cars, houses and whole communities. In this region, the process of recovery and reconstruction is still ongoing, but piles of waste woody biomass have been stacked up everywhere. We have been considering and attempting to determine a productive use of such waste wood biomass. In this report, we introduce a concrete outline of the challenge of using Stirling coolers and Stirling engines in the disaster area. First, we enabled production of domestic hot water and heating and power generation using woody biomass waste from the disaster area by combining the firewood stove with the practical Stirling engine. Second, we tested the use of the Stirling cooler for a support project. The windmill and PV cell power generation system were used to power the Stirling cooler. In the communities of the disaster area, systems which utilize solar and wind energy are also expected to be used in addition to those which burn woody biomass fuel.
