Editor-in-Chief
Takao Tsukada (Tohoku University)

Associate (Editor-in-Cheifs)
Manabu Shimada (Hiroshima University)
Masahiro Shishido (Yamagata University)

Editors
Ryuichi Egashira (Tokyo Institute of Technology)
Jun Fukai (Kyushu University)
Choji Fukuhara (Shizuoka University)
Toshitaka Funazukuri (Chuo University)
Takayuki Hirai (Osaka University)
Jun-ichi Horiuchi (Kitami Institute of Technology)
Eiji Iritani (Nagoya University)
Yoshinori Itaya (Gifu University)
Noriho Kamiya (Kyushu University)
In-Beum Lee (Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTEC))
Kouji Maeda (University of Hyogo)
Hideyuki Matsumoto (Tokyo Institute of Technology)
Nobuyoshi Nakagawa (Gunma University)
Masaru Noda (Fukuoka University)
Hiroyasu Ogino (Osaka Prefecture University)
Mitsuhiro Ohta (The University of Tokushima)
Eika W. Qian (Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology)
Yuji Sakai (Kogakuin University)
Noriaki Sano (Kyoto University)
Naomi Shibasaki-Kitakawa (Tohoku University)
Ken-Ichiro Sotowa (The University of Tokushima)
Hiroshi Suzuki (Kobe University)
Nobuhide Takahashi (Shinshu University)
Shigeki Takishima (Hiroshima University)
Yoshifumi Tsuge (Kyushu University)
Tomoya Tsuji (Nihon University)
Da-Ming Wang (National Taiwan University)
Takuji Yamamoto (University of Hyogo)
Yoshiyuki Yamashita (Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology)
Miki Yoshimune (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST))

Editorial office:
The Society of Chemical Engineers, Japan
Kyoritsu Building, 4-6-19, Kohinata, Bunkyo-ku
Tokyo 112-0006, Japan
journal@scej.org

AIMS AND SCOPE:

Journal of Chemical Engineering of Japan, an official publication of the Society of Chemical Engineers, Japan, is dedicated to providing timely original research results in the broad field of chemical engineering ranging from fundamental principles to practical applications. Subject areas of this journal are listed below. Research works presented in the journal are considered to have significant and lasting value in chemical engineering.

Physical Properties and Physical Chemistry
Transport Phenomena and Fluid Engineering
Particle Engineering
Separation Engineering
Thermal Engineering
Chemical Reaction Engineering
Process Systems Engineering and Safety
Biochemical Food and Medical Engineering
Micro and Nano Systems
Materials Engineering and Interfacial Phenomena
Energy
Environment
Engineering Education

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Impurities such as sulfur compounds cause performance degradation in solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs). We have studied the sulfur poisoning mechanism on an SOFC nickel anode using density functional theory method, focusing on the effects of surface and subsurface sulfur atoms. The binding energy of surface sulfur atoms decreases with an increase in sulfur coverage on the nickel surface. Subsurface sulfur atoms become stable relative to surface sulfur atoms at high sulfur coverage. A subsurface sulfur phase also appears between sulfur adsorption phase and nickel sulfide phase in the calculated phase diagram for Ni–S systems. Influences of sulfur atoms on intermediate adsorbates during surface reactions are also investigated. Sulfur hinders the reaction by destabilizing the reaction intermediates on the nickel surface.

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A simple method GC-W previously proposed for estimating the Wilson parameters from pure-component properties has been adopted to predict the isothermal vapor–liquid equilibria of various binary systems consisting of non-polar and polar molecules. The prediction performances obtained are examined and evaluated in comparison with UNIFAC.

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Along with the sophistication of required optical performance for glass products, the improvement of molten glass homogeneity has become much more important these days. Under various restrictions, mechanical mixing with impellers plays a significant role in achieving high quality and productivity. However, the mixing in continuous laminar flow such as an industrial glass manufacturing process is less understood. Under this circumstance, an improvement in the mixing technology in glass industries heavily depends on seat-of-the-pants approaches. The purpose of this study is to clarify the effects of impeller type on the mixing performance in continuous laminar flow by a newly defined evaluation index calculated from concentration measurements of injected electrolyte tracer with three types of impeller under various impeller speeds. The calculated mixing performance evaluation index could not be solely dependant on the input power, which showed increasing impeller speed or power input did not always improve mixing in the channel in the case of inappropriate flow patterns. Results in this study showed the importance of flow pattern optimization in the continuous laminar flow to enable an improvement in overall mixing in the channel in a limited residence time of an object substance.

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ZnO has been reported to be the optimum heterogeneous catalyst for mitigating harsh supercritical operating conditions for biodiesel production because of its high activity and negligible leaching in supercritical methanol. However, more data on transesterification using ZnO in supercritical methanol is still needed for industrial applications. In this study, biodiesel was produced by the transesterification of soybean oil with a ZnO catalyst in supercritical methanol. The kinetic parameters were determined at the initial stage of the reaction to examine the reaction rate, and the activity of the recycled catalyst was measured to determine its reuse performance. The effect of the free fatty acid content was also investigated to validate the feasibility of applying waste oils to the biodiesel feedstock.

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Single-walled carbon nanohorns (SWCNHs) can be synthesized by a gas-injected arc-in-water (GI-AIW) method, in which N₂ injection is used to generate arc discharge between a graphite anode rod and a holey graphite cathode submerged in water. In the present study, a set of Pd and Ni wires was inserted in a hole drilled axially on a graphite anode rod to synthesize SWCNHs including Pd–Ni alloy nanoparticles (Pd–Ni/SWCNHs) by a one-step method. The N₂ flow rate was varied to investigate its effect on the product yield and size of the Pd–Ni alloy nanoparticles. It was found that an optimized value of the flow rate existed at which the highest yield could be achieved. Further, it was observed that the dispersion of Pd–Ni nanoparticles increased with increasing N₂ flow rate. It was remarkable that the Pd/Ni atomic ratio in the alloy nanoparticles was preserved when the N₂ flow rate was changed. In contrast, this ratio changed with variations in the Pd and Ni wire diameters, made to change the particle diameter.

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Stable operation of a continuous casting process requires precise control of molten steel temperature in a tundish (TD temp), which is a container used to feed molten steel into an ingot mold. Since TD temp is implicitly controlled by adjusting molten steel temperature in the preceding secondary refining process (RH temp), a model relating TD temp with RH temp is required. This research proposes a procedure to predict the probability distribution of TD temp by integrating a gray-box model and a bootstrap filter to cope with uncertainties of the process. The derived probability distribution is used not only to predict TD temp but also to evaluate the reliability of prediction. The proposed method was validated through its application to real operation data at a steel work, and it was confirmed that the developed model satisfied the requirements for its industrial application.

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Carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) hydrogels are promising materials for tissue engineering. In this study, we proposed a method to modify an enzymatically gellable CMC derivative (CMC-Ph) hydrogel by fusing target proteins to a carbohydrate-binding module (CBM). We designed a genetically engineered protein consisting of CBM from Clostridium thermocellum CelJ and green fluorescence protein (GFP) as a model marker. The partition coefficient of CBM-fused GFP, which is the ratio of protein concentration in the hydrogel phase to that in the liquid phase, was about 7 times higher than that of wild-type GFP. In addition, the fusion protein maintained its binding capacity towards the CMC-Ph hydrogel for about two weeks. The high binding capacity of the fusion protein was also preserved in serum-containing medium for animal cell culture. These findings demonstrated that fusing proteins on a CBM is a useful method for creating CMC-derived hydrogels.

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This paper reports a microfluidic droplet formation device suitable for manipulating small amounts of samples using a pressure-driven liquid-delivery system. In this system, a small volume (less than 100 µL) of the sample solution was loaded into the liquid reservoir and delivered by nitrogen gas pressure instead of mechanical pumps. Water-in-oil (W/O) droplets were then formed in the microchannels with a minimized dead volume. We fabricated a disposable microfluidic device from a silicone elastomer, using photolithography and replica molding. The microfluidic device consisted of microchannels, a junction, and a step structure for the preparation of W/O droplets via the step emulsification mechanism that we reported previously. The flow rates of the dispersed and continuous phases were both reasonably well controlled by the applied pressure. We observed that the droplet formation behavior depended on the applied pressure; small droplets, of average diameter 74–80 µm, were prepared at applied pressures lower than 20 kPa, and large droplets, of average diameter more than 400 µm, were prepared at applied pressures higher than 20 kPa. The prepared droplets had a narrow size distribution, with coefficients of variation less than 4.1% under all experimental conditions. The droplet formation behavior, including its change above 20 kPa, was similar to that observed in our previous study using mechanical pumps. The results indicate that the performance of the pressure-driven microfluidic droplet formation technique was as well controlled as that using mechanical pumps. The pressure-driven microfluidic droplet formation technique reported in this study, which achieves minimum sample loss and disposability, is expected to have applications to droplet formation, and encapsulation and compartmentalization of valuable biological samples.

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