Editor-in-Chief
Manabu Shimada (Hiroshima University)

Associate Editor-in-Chiefs
Masahiro Shishido (Yamagata University)
Ken-Ichiro Sotowa (The University of Tokushima)

Editors
Choji Fukuhara (Shizuoka University)
Toshitaka Funazukuri (Chuo University)
Yoshihiro Hashimoto (Nagoya Institute of Technology)
Shunji Homma (Saitama University)
Jun-ichi Horiuchi (Kyoto Institute of Technology)
Yoshinori Itaya (Gifu University)
Masashi Iwata (Osaka Prefecture University)
Noriho Kamiya (Kyushu University)
In-Beum Lee (Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTEC))
Kouji Maeda (University of Hyogo)
Hideyuki Matsumoto (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST))
Michiaki Matsumoto (Doshisha University)
Nobuyoshi Nakagawa (Gunma University)
Tsuguhiko Nakagawa (Okayama Prefectural University)
Yasuya Nakayama (Kyushu University)
Masaru Noda (Fukuoka University)
Mikihiro Nomura (Shibaura Institute of Technology)
Eika W. Qian (Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology)
Yuji Sakai (Kogakuin University)
Noriaki Sano (Kyoto University)
Naomi Shibasaki-Kitakawa (Tohoku University)
Hiroshi Suzuki (Kobe University)
Nobuhide Takahashi (Shinshu University)
Kazuhiro Takeda (Shizuoka University)
Shigeki Takishima (Hiroshima University)
Yoshifumi Tsuge (Kyushu University)
Tomoya Tsuji (Nihon University)
Shigeyuki Uemiya (Gifu University)
Da-Ming Wang (National Taiwan University)
Takayuki Watanabe (Kyushu University)
Takuji Yamamoto (University of Hyogo)
Tetsuya Yamamoto (Nagoya University)
Masahiro Yoshida (Kagoshima University)
Yasuo Yoshimi (Shibaura Institute of 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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Based on experimental data gathered from a pilot-scale rotating drum, some improvements in the steady-state modeling of the bed depth of the material flow in a rotary drum are presented. These improvements were achieved in two ways: first, through the application of a support vector regression (SVR) method on the experimental bed depth data collected for the entire length of the drum including the critical point of the discharge end, and second, by incorporating four additional parameters into an existing well-known steady-state model and further fitting the modified model to the experimental data using a genetic algorithm (GA). As a boundary condition of the modified model, the discharge-end bed depth data were also modeled using SVR during the parameter estimation of the improved model. The bed depth of the material was measured through image processing. The new models were shown to fit the experimental data much better than the existing traditional model, particularly at a higher axis inclination and lower rotational speed. As the main conclusion, no large deviations were observed for the improved model in comparison with the original model when predicting the real depth at the discharge end of a drum.

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Plain Dutch weave and twilled Dutch weave meshes are superior filter media in terms of their high mechanical strength and tiny apertures. However, because they have high flow resistivity due to their complex flow paths, it is crucial to predict the pressure drop with high accuracy for a filtration process. We, therefore, investigated the effect of the aperture structure of a Dutch weave mesh on the flow resistivity. First, we proposed a calculation model for estimating the aperture size of a twilled Dutch weave mesh to thoroughly understand the aperture structure; whereas, the aperture structure of a plain Dutch weave mesh has already been clarified. Next, numerical simulations were performed using a combination of the lattice Boltzmann and immersed boundary methods. It was found that the drag force of the Dutch weave mesh increased at the inside aperture where the volume fraction increased, and in the twilled Dutch weave mesh, the drag force at the center also varied with the local torsion of the flow path. Based on these findings, we derived an equation for estimating the pressure drop across the Dutch weave mesh, and experimentally verified its validity. This enables a rational and highly accurate prediction of the pressure drop.

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According to the recent trend for the integrated safety management of chemical plants as part of plant life cycle engineering, it is recommended that a safety integrity level (SIL) analysis be performed to simultaneously meet the operational efficiency and safety specifications of a process. In this paper, a unified framework is proposed for adapting life cycle engineering to risk assessment, including reusing the results, recommending a risk reduction by using a hazard and operability (HAZOP) support tool as a hazard identification method, and determining the SIL from a layer of protection analysis combined with fuzzy logic. First, a HAZOP support system is used to select scenarios with reducing efforts when the HAZOP study is implemented. Second, a fuzzy layer of protection analysis (fLOPA) is conducted to adjust the most reliable independent protection layer (IPL) by solving the objective uncertainty, which includes the failure rate data, probability of failure on demand, and subjective uncertainty. The required SIL for each scenario is determined, and a safety instrumented system is recommended to fit the demanded SIL. This framework, which is validated for a hydroxylamine case study, makes it possible to determine the required SIL with less effort and considers the uncertainties in the process, especially for plants that handle reactive and hazardous chemicals.

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Dimensionality reduction is a fundamental task of high-dimensional data analysis in order to reduce redundant information of the collected data. In this paper, we apply diffusion maps framework to address this problem, and then propose a novel fault detection technique based on the k nearest neighbor diffusion distance method of feature space. First, normal high-dimensional data sets are mapped into a low-dimensional feature space by analyzing the insightful relationship between data points, and feature space can represent major information of raw data. Subsequently, like the traditional kNN method, the sum of k nearest neighbor diffusion distance is computed and the kernel density estimation method is used to set a threshold of a normal process. Comparing these two methods, modeling using k nearest neighbor diffusion distance method of feature space can economize storage space and increase the speed of fault detection. In addition, this method can solve nonlinear equation of industrial process data, and the non-Gaussian characteristics of modeling data can be solved by using kernel density estimation method. Finally, the effectiveness of diffusion maps algorithm in the aspect of data classification is verified by the numerical examples and the superiority of the proposed method is illustrated by the monitoring of TE process.

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This paper proposes a novel method for diagnosing the sources and propagation paths of plant-wide oscillations. The main oscillatory process loop variables and dominant oscillation frequency of the process loop variables were automatically selected based on a spectral independent component analysis algorithm. The complex causality among the selected oscillatory process variables was then revealed by partial directed coherence whose magnitude at the dominant oscillation frequency represented the intensity of the influence among the process variables and was visualized in the form of a causality diagram. The location of the oscillation disturbance was identified intuitively through the final causality diagram. Simulations and an industrial case study demonstrated the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed procedure.

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Biomass is expected to be an alternative resource to fossil resources. In this study, the development of a biomass conversion method into the valuable chemical, reducing sugar, was examined. For the conversion, thermochemical technology was focused on for its advantage of short reaction time, and ionic liquid was focused on as a reagent to overcome the unpreferable disadvantage of thermochemical technology, which is the low selectivity. Cedar and crystalline cellulose were pretreated with ionic liquid for reforming into desirable precursors of reducing sugar. Especially when they were pretreated by 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium methylphosphonate at 150°C for 1 h, the pretreatment worked effectively by decreasing the crystallinity of samples. Pretreated cedar and crystalline cellulose were converted into reducing sugar under hydrothermal conditions, respectively, by 39 C-% and 90 C-%. Recovery of ionic liquid was also examined. When cedar was used as a material, lignin was dissolved into ionic liquid through pretreatment, which was undesirable because of difficult separation thereof. When crystalline cellulose was used as a material, 98.3% of the ionic liquid was recovered after the conversion with the highest yield of reducing sugar (90 C-%).

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The removal of radioactive ¹³⁷Cs from contaminated soil and water is urgently needed in Japan. Rhodococcus erythropolis CS98 strain possesses a higher ability for cesium accumulation than previously-reported microorganisms. Immobilization of CS98 strain in polymer supports shows promise for efficient cesium removal. In this study, we compared agarose gel and 3 types of PVA gels for CS98 strain immobilization. We clarified that (i) the mechanical strength of the PVA gels was higher than that of agarose gel, (ii) CS98 strain immobilized in agarose gel could accumulate radioactive ¹³⁷Cs, and (iii) the ability of the strain for radioactive cesium accumulation was higher in agarose gel than in PVA gels. These results demonstrate that agarose gel is more promising as a polymer support material for CS98 strain than PVA gels.

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We report an investigation on the growth of thin films of anthracene on silicon substrates by rapid expansion of supercritical solutions (RESS) using carbon dioxide. The growth characteristics and growth rates of the grains were investigated with substrate temperatures in the range of 308.2–326.2 K, with spray distances in the range of 3.0–8.0 cm, and with an equilibrium temperature of 318.2 K and equilibrium pressure of 15.0 MPa. The morphology of the grains was island-like at lower substrate temperatures and/or with shorter spray distances, and was dendritic at higher substrate temperatures and/or larger spray distances. The growth rates were in the range of 2–8×10⁻⁸ m s⁻¹, which is one order of magnitude faster than from the gas phase. The activation energy for grain growth was 107.7 kJ mol⁻¹ with the conditions that corresponded to island-like growth, and was 38.4 kJ mol⁻¹ with conditions that gave rise to dendritic growth. It follows that the growth mode and growth rate depend mainly on the surface integration at lower substrate temperatures and/or shorter spray distances, and is determined mainly by mass transfer at higher substrate temperatures and/or larger spray distances.

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We report on an investigation to the effects of supercritical solution concentrations on the crystal morphology, crystallinity, growth rate, and number density of anthracene grains in thin films on silicon substrates by rapid expansion of supercritical solutions (RESS) using carbon dioxide to examine the crystal growth mechanism of anthracene thin films. The solution concentrations varied in the range of 2.10–7.15×10⁻⁵ (molar fraction) at an equilibrium temperature of 318.2 K and an equilibrium pressure of 15.0 MPa and in the range of 1.72–6.34×10⁻⁵ (molar fraction) at an equilibrium temperature of 328.2 K and an equilibrium pressure of 15.0 MPa. The morphology of the grains was island-like at higher solution concentrations and was dendritic or fractal at lower solution concentrations. The growth rate of dendritic grains was higher than that of island-like grains and the trend of the growth rate changed at a concentration of 3.40×10⁻⁵ (molar fraction; a threshold concentration) with a change in morphology of grains from dendritic to island-like. Although the number densities of island-like and dendritic grains increased almost linearly with the solution concentration, the trend in the number density of grains also changed at the threshold concentration, with the change in morphology from dendritic to island-like grains. The crystal growth of grains deposited on the substrate was dominant and most of the given supersaturation was consumed for the crystal growth of grains at solution concentrations lower than the threshold concentration. At solution concentrations higher than the threshold concentration, the crystal nucleation on the substrate was dominant and most of the given supersaturation was consumed for the crystal nucleation of grains, followed by the crystal growth of the grains.

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