MMA production is one of the core businesses of the Basic Chemicals Sector of Sumitomo Chemical, and its demand and capacity is continuously going to be expanded, mainly in Asia. Now five technologies for monomer- MMA production coexist in the world, and none of them is the predominant process. Among those technologies, the C4 methods are going to be adopted in many production plants. Sumitomo Chemical also selected this technology for its MMA production. In this paper, the current processes, mainly for C4 methods, and the next generation of potential technologies will be reviewed.
(by Koichi NAGAI,Toshiaki UI )

Plastic CAE (Computer Aided Engineering) is used as indispensable technology in the plastic product design today. However, by integrating CAE technology and the CAO (Computer Aided Optimization) technology in which utilization has started, the automatic optimal design of a plastic product is attained and much more shortening the period of a product design, reducing development cost, and improving the quality and the performance of a product can be expected. Moreover, it becomes the powerful support technology of material development. In this paper, the outline of the integrated technology of the plastics CAE and CAO that we have developed, some application examples, and the integrated design optimization system for the plastic products of our company are described.
(by Yoshiaki TOGAWA,Tomoo HIROTA,Shinichi NAGAOKA )

Recently pharmacokinetics is increasingly gaining weight in the development of new drugs. At every stage of the development process (from discovery to sales and even after the launch of a product), it is becoming essential to generate appropriate pharmacokinetics information in a timely manner. The information is quite useful and, therefore, enables us to make a go/no-go decision on a sound scientific basis. This report presents an overall picture of pharmacokinetics study conducted at our laboratory including some methods employed for this purpose. In addition, one of the new technologies that are expected to empower the pharmacokinetics study as well as clinical trials is described.
(by Kimihiko SATO,Takao WATANABE,Kazuhiko NISHIOKA,Masashi YABUKI,Setsuko KOMURO )

Today, imaging diagnosis in oncology is based on the regional anatomical information. However, anatomy-based imaging provides limited functional information and can only differentiate tumors from normal tissue based on shape, density, vascularity, fat and water. Imaging of regional tumor biology by nuclear medicine provides quantitative estimates of regional biochemistry and receptor status and can overcome the sampling error and difficulty in performing serial studies inherent with biopsy. In this review, current status of the functional imaging of tumor by nuclear medicine will be described.
(by Hideshi HATTORI,Jun TOYOHARA )

Development of nanotechnology necessitates the structural, physical and chemical characterization of constituent advanced materials at the nanometer level. For example, compound semiconductors used to optical and electronic devices are composed of many thin layers in nanometer level. Electron microscopy is one of the most effective methods for these kinds of analysis, which gives direct information of the structure and the elements distribution with high spatial resolution. Recently, new imaging techniques in electron microscope have been developed. This review describes state of the art and future technologies of electron microscope.
(by Yoshiaki HONDA )

Nowadays, electrostatic theories are usefully applied to various industries. On the other hand static electricity cause ESD (electrostatic discharge) problem in high technology industries or fire and explosion in chemical industries. In order to prevent incidents caused by electrostatic discharge, it is important that operators or staffs working in chemical plants find electrostatic potential hazards and have consultations with safety experts. Electrostatic charge and discharge phenomena, countermeasures against static electricity and some methods for evaluating electrostatic hazards are described in this paper.
(by Kiyoshi OTA )

Sumitomo Chemical has developed a new low temperature HCl oxidation process with a fixed bed reactor and a RuO2/TiO2 catalyst that has high activity and high thermal conductivity. The main feature of our technology is that the hydrogen chloride conversion is high, the product chlorine is more pure than that obtained by electrolysis of sodium chloride, and high quality muriatic acid with food additive grade is also obtained as by-product. As the fixed bed reactor is compact, it deals with up to 400,000t/y of chlorine with only one reactor. The chlorine manufacturing cost is very low due to the small electric power consumption and the heat recovery from the reaction heat.
(by Kiyoshi IWANAGA,Kouhei SEKI,Takuo HIBI,Kohtaro ISSOH,Tetsuya SUZUTA,Mikitoshi NAKADA,Yasuhiko MORI,Tadashi ABE )

In the latest decade, synthetic rubbers and fillers for automotive tires have been changed drastically.The tendency to make much of "energy saving (fuel economy)" has come to be more remarkable year by year. In order to satisfy this demand, new silica compound systems have been developed in stead of the conventional CB (carbon black) systems for tire tread. In addition, for the purpose of improving the performances of this silica compound systems, precise polymer designs such as the functionalization are needed. Living anionic polymerization procedure is a very useful method to meet this aim. For example, precise chain-end functionalization and multi-functionalization can be achieved.
In this article, the trend in the field of the silica compound system and the polymer design of solution SBRs are surveyed, including the authors' study on the new multi-functionalization method.
(by Katsunari INAGAKI,Mayumi HAYASHI,Akio IMAI )

Sumilizer G series are the excellent additives for maintaining the function of a polymer material. They consist of Sumilizer GM, Sumilizer GS, Sumilizer GA-80 and Sumilizer GP. They are developed as the fruits of evaluation and synthetic technologies of Sumitomo Chemical. We have been studying on their new applications through not only the evaluation of performance but also the confirmation of hypothetical working mechanism. In this review, the outlines of unique functions of Sumilizer G series and the expanded new applications are shown.
(by Fumitoshi KOJIMA )

Delaus^® (diclocymet) is a novel fungicide developed by Sumitomo Chemical Co., Ltd. to prevent rice blast disease in paddy field. It was registered as an agricultural chemical in April 2000 in Japan. As part of the applied development of Delaus^®, we also developed a mixture of diclocymet with fipronil, named Delaus^® Prince^®, to prevent various pest insects as well as rice blast. In the course of investigating various laborsaving application methods, we developed a novel method of applying into seedling boxes at the sowing stage with the new equipment for the purpose.
(by Masaomi OGAWA,Motoyoshi URAKAWA )

The tendency to improve the quality of coated paper becomes more and more marked in these years. In connection with this, the demand of increasing sheet gloss of coated paper is also rising. In our previous paper, we studied sheet gloss and surface roughness of coated paper and found the good relation between sheet gloss and roughness-width larger than pigment size. In this paper, we focus on the effect of volume change of coating color and constriction of base paper during drying process on surface roughness. To study the properties of coating color and the constrictions of base substance, coating colors are prepared changing in total solids, pigments and water retention agents and are coated on base paper and polyester film. The result shows that sheet gloss of coated paper depends strongly on volume change of coating color during drying process ; the smaller the volume change of coating color during drying process, the higher the sheet gloss of coated paper. This tendency is same in case of coating on base paper and coating on polyester film. Namely, the coating color, the volume change of which is small during drying process, gives high sheet gloss to the coated paper and such influence is superior to that of the constrictions of base paper which arise from the poor water retention of coating color.
(by Noriko KITAMURA )

In the field of toxicology, recent advances in genomics research has led to the development of toxicogenomics, a novel research field enabling us to analyze chemical toxicities or side-effects at the level of gene expression. While participating in public toxicogenomics projects, we are also concentrating on in-house toxicogenomics studies to establish novel and efficient toxicological screening methods and to clarify the mechanisms of toxicants. Here, we will review current trends and perspectives on toxicogenomics, including examples from our own research.
(by Toru YAMADA,Kayo SUMIDA,Koichi SAITO )

Theoretical limits of characteristics of color-filters for LCDs are investigated. The results and design tools for (1) chromaticity of 3-primeries, (2) lightness, pigment particle size, (4) light loss by ITO, (5) special color filter for LED back light, and (6) microscopic spectrophotometry are presented.
(by Kiyoharu NAKATSUKA )

A new method for determining vapor-liquid equilibrium data, especially the relative volatility of unknown components, is explained in detail. The relative volatilities were measured by headspace gas chromatography (HSGC). This method has been used to measure physical properties such as vapor- liquid equilibria (VLE) by many researchers. Also, the experimental results for the VLE of binary systems and the activity coefficients at infinite dilution measured by HSGC are presented. Finally, the apparatus developed by Rogalski and Malanowski which have been used to measure VLE data is introduced, and compared with HSGC method.
(by Morio YAMAMOTO,Hideo NARAHARA )

Recently, the role of computational chemistry is increasingly important, but unfortunately the field is still only for the specialist. On the other hand, as diffusion of internet technology, a lot of systems to solve chemical problems are spreading. Hence, for the purpose of promotion to open in-house system and database, a new system based on web technology has been established. The web system realized the new research environment in company, which easily access synthetic route design system, in-house reaction retrieval database, and property estimation system via unified graphical input editor.
(by Akio TANAKA,Wataru KATOUDA )