Sumitomo Chemical Co., Ltd. has developed a catalytic process that is highly recognized and applied worldwide as a technology for recycling the hydrogen chloride generated as by-product in isocyanate plants into chlorine. In this article we outline the trends and views in the development of various technologies for chlorine production from hydrogen chloride, and present the recent advances in catalyst technology for the Sumitomo Chemical process.
(by Hiroyuki ANDO,Youhei UCHIDA,Kohei SEKI,Carlos KNAPP,Norihito OMOTO,Masahiro KINOSHITA)

Profluthrin (Fairytale^®), a newly discovered insecticide from Sumitomo Chemical Co., Ltd., provides high efficacy against fabric pests and also has relatively high vapor pressure and low mammalian toxicity, which means Profluthrin has various superior properties as an active ingredient of moth proofers. In addition, it has excellent activity against sanitary pests like flies, mosquitoes and cockroaches. Profluthrin was launched in 2004 in Japan, and several companies have adopted it for their household insecticide products. In this report we will introduce the outline of the new synthetic pyrethroid Profluthrin.
(by Kazuya UJIHARA,Masayo SUGANO,Kazuhide NAKADA,Kazunori IWAKURA,Keiichi NISHIHARA,Hiroshi KATOH)

Airbag devices installed to protect passengers in cars are veiled with a part that is called an "airbag cover" made of TPE. The impact performance at low temperature and durability to maintain performance after many years, are important requirements for TPE used for airbag covers. Recently in line with an increase in the types of vehicles being equipped with airbags and in installation locations, the demand characteristics required from TPE for airbag cover applications have changed due to differences in the construction and shape of airbags. In this paper, we present the approaches on offering high performance and high functionality of TPE for airbag cover applications with examples of the airbag devices for drivers and for passengers.
(by Kousuke OHTANI,Tatsuo SASSA)

The control performance diagnosis system, PID Monitor, and the PID tuning tool, PID Tune, have been developed. These systems are useful in improving the control and maintaining high productivity of plants. PID Monitor observes the performance of all controllers in the plant, and it picks out the loops which have problems. The diagnosis report is displayed as a Web page on the intranet. The operator and the staff can efficiently improve the control by supervising it. PID Tune is used to tune extracted loops. It is able to do the tuning safely without process changes, as it does not need specific plant tests. This paper introduces the technical background of these systems and some applications in a real plant.
(by Hidekazu KUGEMOTO)

LC-NMR has been noted as a practical method for mixture analysis in recent years. Technical backgrounds of high performance LC-NMR are discussed from the point of view of NMR, chromatography and related technologies. Constituent profiling and LC-2D NMR are introduced as practical applications. Further hyphenated techniques such as LC-NMR/MS and chiral LC-CD-NMR are also described.
(by Takashi TOKUNAGA,Masahiko OKAMOTO)

”Chromatography"is an indispensable technique for treating small organic molecules, and "Hyphenated Technology", which means a combination of two different techniques (in this case, chromatography and mass spectrometry, etc.), is a powerful tool for quick on-line identification of trace amount impurities in processes. During production process development for active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and reactive intermediates, these techniques are mainly utilized for confirmation of synthesized target molecules, by-products and impurities, and also for their identification. This paper describes the contribution of these techniques to process study acceleration and product quality improvement, while showing some examples.
(by Masafumi UEDA,Yoshimi FUJII,Tomokazu NAKAMURA)

Engineering plastics and metals have been extensively replaced by polypropylene (PP) based materials in automotive parts in order to achieve weight reductions and cost savings. To accomplish this, PP compounds which are made from PP and other components are under intense investigation. In this paper, we review the progress of research into compounding technology, improvement of mechanical properties and functionalization. Some problems and solutions for injection molding are also summarized. Furthermore, material developments for environmental load reduction are shown.
(by Satoru MORITOMI,Tsuyoshi WATANABE,Susumu KANZAKI)

Organic photovoltaic, OPV, cells have been attracted much attention for next generation solar cells. OPV is based on the same technology as polymer light-emitting diodes, PLED, which has been developed intensively for TV application at Sumitomo Chemical Co., Ltd. Many PLED-related materials and device fabrication processes can accelerate the development of OPV technology. Although very high efficiency of 6.5% has already been achieved, the efficiency of more than 10% is necessary for the commercialization of OPV. In order to achieve this goal, a new class of low band gap polymer has successfully been prepared together with morphology controlling methods of an active layer of OPV. In this paper, we report the present status of OPV research at Sumitomo Chemical Co., Ltd. as well as worldwide research.
(by Kunihito MIYAKE,Yasunori UETANI,Takahiro SEIKE,Takehito KATO,Kenichiro OYA,Ken YOSHIMURA,Toshihiro OHNISHI)

We discuss a simulation method to compute the collimated or the angle-dependent diffuse reflection and transmission of a dielectric slab containing randomly distributed dielectric or metal inclusions. The illumination can either be coherent, incoherent or partially coherent. We solve a multiflux formulation of the scalar radiative transfer equation (SRTE) for the purpose. The scattering and extinction cross-sections and the phase function of a single spherical inclusion are computed using Mie analytical theory. In the case of non-spherical scattering centres, we compute the scattering characteristics using a three dimensional finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method and a near-to-far field transformation integral. For metal inclusions, a recursive convolution FDTD that implements a 1st order Drude model is used. The near-to-far field transformation is achieved by numerically implementing the well-known Rayleigh-Sommerfeld integral for the propagation of the scalar field components. The simulation method can be used to investigate various nano-structured devices made from composite media for novel optical properties.
(by Saswatee BANERJEE,Kiyoharu NAKATSUKA)

Corrosion under insulation (CUI) is one of the degradation phenomena that have become a serious problem in recent years especially in chemical plants that have been operating for a long time. Development of a CUI inspection technique which doesn"t require the removal of insulation and which is applicable to explosion-proof petrochemical plants is strongly needed. So we focused attention on optical fiber Doppler sensors which already have the explosion-proof characteristics, and we tried to develop a new CUI inspection technique using them. The development of this new inspection technique is explained.
(by Toyokazu TADA,Hidehiko SUETSUGU,Hisakazu MORI)