In this study, Mn-Co-P nanowire catalysts were prepared by hydrothermal synthesis followed by thermal phosphorization. It is found that the surface of Mn-Co-P catalyst was oxidized to amorphous phosphates in the air, and subsequently transformed to Co(OH)₂ and Mn(OH)₂ materials by in-situ rebuilding of Co(OH)₂ and Mn(OH)₂ to nanosheets, which wrapped over the inside Mn-Co-P nanowire homogeneously. This novel 3D hierarchical Mn-Co-P nanowire @ Co(OH)₂/Mn(OH)₂ nansheet core/shell array was further investigated as binder- and conductive-agent-free cathodes for HER in 1.0 mol L^-1 KOH. It showed remarkably enhanced catalytic property, revealing an overpotential of 115 mV at the current density of 10 mA cm^-2.

With marketing fuel cell vehicles, a high-pressure hydrogen compressor becomes more important. The conventional method of hydrogen compression is a mechanical process. However it costs a lot in especially regulations of Japan. Therefore it is interesting to develop a thermally-driven compressor by using hydrogen storage alloys because the lower cost can be expected. In this work, we propose a hydrogen compression system by two-step processes using different types of Ti-Cr alloys. Demonstration test of the developed system was performed in HyTReC (Hydrogen Energy Test and Research Center; Fukuoka, Japan). The H₂ compression up to high-pressure region of around 80 MPa by using heat around 190 °C instead of mechanical method was successfully demonstrated.

For fuel cell vehicles, high purity H₂ is required to maintain polymer electrolyte fuel cell, and then NH₃ concentration in feed-H₂ has to be reduced down to lower than 0.1 ppm. So far, we have investigated various kinds of NH₃ absorption materials to purify the H₂ obtained by cracking NH₃, which is one of promising hydrogen carrier. Magnesium chloride is typical NH₃ absorption material, and the NH₃ absorption properties are investigated in further detail. As result, it is expected that the kinetic barrier to form ammine complexes of MgCl₂ is strongly related to the process on the rearrangement of atoms with the NH₃ absorption.

The fuel engine, the electricity power and the fuel cell of the low pollution vehicle became diversification because the development of the vehicle having advanced in late years. Examination of the energy efficiency is the most effective to evaluate performance and environmental load for these power systems. However, it is difficult to compare these performances because each power source and principle are different. Conventionally, the evaluation of the performance use the enthalpy. However, the enthalpy cannot express quality of the energy, and it is difficult to grasp a limit and the problem of the systems exactly. This study evaluated the power system using the exergy analysis in consideration of the second law thermodynamics. The exergy can grasp each performance of not only a kind of the fuel. This study found the quantity of exergy supposing combustion engine used gasoline fuel or hydrogen fuel.

Greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide, methane and dinitrogen monoxide contained in the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases have about 60% of carbon dioxide. The emissions in Japanese transportation is 17.2% of the total, and the proportion occupied by cars is 14.7%. For this reason, automobiles emit a lot of carbon dioxide in the transport sector. Hydrogen containing no carbon atoms is used as fuel for fuel cell vehicles. However, considering the method of using ammonia as an alternative fuel to hydrogen, we examined a method of decomposing ammonia into hydrogen in the car. In addition, it is advantageous that ammonia is liquid at low temperature to energy amount per volume is large. Furthermore, we will develop a control system for fuel supply and realize a fuel cell vehicle equipped with an ammonia decomposition system.

A novel perovskite (Ce_0.1Sr_0.9)xCo_0.3Fe_0.7O_3-δ (CS_xCF, x= 0.9, 1.0 and 1.1), as a promising cathode material for intermediate-temperature solid oxide fuel cells (IT-SOFCs), was synthesized by the solid state reaction method. It is found that A-site deficiency of perovskite oxides increased the oxygen ionic conductivity due to the additional oxygen vacancy generation. The maximum conductivity of CS_1.1CF at 550°C reached 185.38 Ω cm^-2, and CS_0.9CF have lower activation energy from Arrhenius plots of electrical conductivity values, indicating that proportion have high catalytic activity of oxygen reduction reaction (ORR).

A new 5kw class steam power generator was evaluated in fluctuated low temperature heat sources. The maximum net electrical power output 4.29kW is obtained by supplying 0.887MPa steam at 174.7°C. The electrical efficiency achieved by this system was more than 3 % under fluctuated thermal input condition.

Clustered microflames (CMF) established on micro-burners had an ability of high concentration of CO exhaust. The present study, CMF was investigated on its characteristics of CO exhaust and heat flux to the wall by changing the configurations of micro-burners and wall and the flow conditions, in order to improve the energy conversion efficiency of direct flame fuel cell (DFFC). It was shown that the shorter nozzle pitch burner reached higher maximum heat flux although it required lower fuel flow rate. In addition, the shorter nozzle pitch let the flames survive until lower fuel flow rate. When the distance between the wall and the burner became longer, the heat flux reached higher maximum at higher flow rate. The ratio between CO and H₂ was nearly constant regardless of the fuel flow rate.

The characteristics of heating particles by methane clustered microflames and the three-dimensional flame structure of those microflames were experimentally investigated under different fuel flow rates for the application of flame synthesis. There are 6 fuel nozzles (0.23 mm diameters) to issue methane at vertexes of a regular hexagon with 2.5 mm on a side. At the center of these fuel nozzles, there is an air nozzle (0.7 mm diameters). Tantalum nitride (TaN) particles were seeded into air and issued into the center of clustered microflames. Vertical profiles of particle temperatures were measured by comparing the spectral shape of the continuum radiation between 600 nm and 1,000 nm with Planck radiation. Flow velocity profiles along the central axis were measured with seed particles of silicon dioxide by particle image velocimetry (PIV). Temperature histories of particles were obtained based on the profiles of temperature and flow velocity. Computed tomography (CT) method based on the emission from electronically excited CH was applied and the three-dimensional flame shape was obtained. The particle-seeded flow velocity in the center depended on the flame structure. It was shown that the increase of fuel flow rate increased the duration time of high temperature as well as maximum temperature.

This paper aims to clarify the effect of a bituminous coal addition on fly ash emission during air combustion of a low rank coal. 10 to 30 wt% of the bituminous coal was physically mixed with the low rank coal and then combusted in a lab-scale drop tube furnace at 1450 °C. The resulting ash was captured as bottom ash, fine ash (cyclone ash), and ultrafine ash (Low Pressure Impactor ash). Gaseous Na, K, Mg and Ca elements emitted from the low rank coal were captured by the surface of the ash particle through chemical reactions with aluminosilicate in the bituminous coal at high temperature. As a result, the ultrafine ash with particle size less than 1.0 μm generated from the combustion of the low rank coal was dramatically decreased with addition of the bituminous coal.

Among various recovery processes from waste plastics, the gasification with steam addition is one of the promising technologies to reduce unwanted tar and increase the conversion to syngas. In this study, batch furnace experiments of pyrolysis and steam gasification were conducted on three kinds of plastics. Gas, tar and soot and generation behaviors were examined in them. Granular samples of ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene), PC (polycarbonate) and PE (polyethylene) were used as simulated waste plastics. All experiments were duplicated using different sampling trains for gas collections and tar collections. Nitrogen gas was fed into the furnace to achieve an inert atmosphere, and the temperature was raised to 973 K, 1073 K and 1173 K, respectively. 1.2 g of the sample was inserted into the furnace. In the steam gasification experiment, water vapor was entrained by the nitrogen.

Among those renewable energy, waste is favorably considered as a stable energy resource which is not dependent on weather conditions. However, power generation from waste has not yet become common in small-scale waste incineration plants due to its lower power generation efficiency and economic viability. In this study, five power generation methods utilized in such small-scale facilities were compared in terms of the efficieny, economical feasibility and conditions for government grants. The result showed that dehumidification method had the highest power generation and energy recycling efficiency, and also it was found that the Sound Material-cycle Society grant and the CO₂ Control grant are reasonably applicable to three and four power generation mehods respectively.

Regenerative burner system generally ignites a pair of burners integrated with the heat reservoirs alternately at intervals of several tens of seconds. While one burner is burning, the exhaust gas passes through and heats the other burner’s heat reservoir to recover the energy of the exhaust gas. Then, when the other burner burns, the air for combustion in turn passes through the preheated heat reservoir to recover the exhaust gas energy which had conventionally been wasted, to provide high efficient combustion. In recent years, and energy saving of further industrial furnace is required, we are towards the efficiency improvement and downsizing of this regenerative burner system, it was decided to proceed with the research and development that focuses on the wall structure of the heat storage body using fine ceramics.

The authors developed a web-based scheduling tool for electric demand management of small scale industrial and commercial customers. A main objective of development of web-based system is to ensure the calculation environment continuously independent on performance of user’s computer.

Hiroshima Gas Technical Research Institute has developed a power generation system that utilizes the pressure difference of the medium pressure gas of city gas that can be used even by medium and small gas companies. This system can control the second side gas pressure with simple structure.

And it is kind to the global environment that does not exhaust carbon dioxide in a generation process.

It was necessary to improve the sorting performance and decrease the energy consumption, install small space of separation device in mechanical recycling using waste plastics. A sink float separation tank was designed taking several conditions into consideration for example shape of tank, flow rate of the fluid (water) and the angle of the nozzle to the tank. Fluid simulation was carried out for the shape of tank before the experiment. The flow rates and the Reynolds number were considered during the simulation analysis. In this study, three types of sink float separation tank which one is horizontal and others are vertical were designed and experimented. It is concluded that an improved vertical tank indicates the high performance separate higher than 90%, and that saves space less than 50%, energy saving was achieved.

In recent years, biodiesel fuel (Hereinafter, BDF fuel) that can be used as a diesel fuel substitute fuel has attracted attention from the viewpoint of prevention of global warming. As a commecial method of BDF fuel, by using vegetable fats and oils as a raw material, chemical treatment such as methyl esterification (alkali catalytic method) is carried out and impurities are removed in a subsequent refining step to produce be done. However, if this chemical treatment is inadequate as incomplete combustion can occur that can not burn BDF fuel.

Therefore, in order to remedy this drawback, we used BDF fuel refined on the other hand, research process as a BDF fuel for a diesel engine and verified the exhaust gas concentration. We concluded that refine BDF, process as mixed BDF fuel can improve NO_x and CO value (using small generator).

Removal of dusts on the boiler heating surface is one of the means for high-efficiency power generation in municipal solid waste incineration plants. Generally, it is difficult to clean the radiation chamber of the boiler during operation, so that the flue gas temperature at outlet of radiation chamber increase. To solve these problems, experiment for the "SCS (Spray Cleaning System)" which is an on-line cleaning system of the radiation chamber were carried out in a plant in operation. During the 250 days experiment, the SCS showed stable performance. In the terms of using SCS, the flue gas temperature at outlet of radiation chamber was around 50 °C below that of average without SCS, and dusts on radiation chamber were clearly reduced. This experiment result showed reducing the corrosion risk of the superheater and the effectiveness for high-efficiency power generation.

The printed circuit board (PCB) is used widely for the household electric appliance. Establishment of the recycling technique for PCB is necessary because the amount of the PCB waste is increasing today, and many valuable metals are included in the waste. This study is aimed at the investigation of the pyrolytic behavior of epoxy resin for feedstock recycling. The experimental results show that the main decomposition of the resin occurs at about 420°C. The pyrolytic products contain aromatic compounds such as phenol, isopropyl phenol and bisphenol A as liquid products and low molecular weight hydrocarbon gas such as methane as gaseous products. It is also shown that the selectivity of the product is affected by catalysts.

Catalytic liquefaction process using spent FCC catalyst is one of the feedstock recycling process of plastics that gives higher yield and higher quality oils. In our previous studies, granulated blast furnace slag (GBF slag) similar in chemical composition of spent FCC catalyst was used as liquefaction catalyst for reduce the process cost that gave equivalent oil yield to the spent FCC catalyst process. In this study, we reported on the evaluation at weight ratio of GBF slag and polyethylene (WHSV value) and catalytic durability for a long-time experiment. As a result, WHSV value of 0.5 was obtained in the experiment using 100 g of GBF slag, and about 17 times catalytic durability was confirmed under this condition.

It is widely known that PTFE(polytetrafluoroethylene) produces harmful gases, for example, C₃F₆, C₂F₄, and HF by pyrolysis. In this study, CaCO₃ or Ca(OH)₂ were added to PTFE to prevent from producing harmful gases and to fixate F in the residue as CaF₂ by acid-base reaction between PTFE and CaCO₃ or Ca(OH)₂. In a series of pyrolysis experiments, F in PTFE was fixated in the residue as CaF₂. The yields of F as a CaF₂ were about 20-40wt% in the case of CaCO₃ addition and 50-60wt% in the case of Ca(OH)₂ addition. To raise the yield of F as CaF₂, Ca(OH)₂, PE(polyethylene) and zeolite were added to PTFE. About 80wt% was obtained for the yield of F as CaF₂. It is revealed that simultaneous pyrolysis of PTFE and PE promotes the formation of HF and is effective in the fixation F as a CaF₂.

To investigate the ability of MoO₃ as a flame retardant alternative Sb₂O3, we discussed the interaction between finely particulated MoO₃ and a copolymer of chlorine containing resin-cellulose compound by pyrolysis and spectral methods. The pyrolysis product of chlorine containing resin-cellulose compound was analyzed by GC-FID. In situ XANES under the pyrolyzing condition was carried out to clear the changing process of chemical states of Mo included in chlorine containing resin. The GC-FID analysis of gaseous products suggest that MoO3 inhibit thermal degradation of cellulose. The XANES spectra of Mo indicated that MoO₃ was converted to molybdenum chloride and molybdenum oxychloride at 260-320°C, that were converted to metallic molybdenum and/or molybdenum dioxide over 340°C.

Although the annual recycling rate of waste plastics domestically discharged over 9 million tons has been improved year by year, there are unused ones more than 1.5 million tons a year yet. If waste plastics can be converted to a versatile electricity, its use will be dramatically improved. This approach is a technology of catalytically decomposing waste plastics with a catalyst to gasify it and generating electricity with a conventional propane gas generator. For this, even if the amount of waste is a several dozen per day, it can be recycled at the discharge site, and the possibility of waste as a local production for local consumption model will be greatly expanded.

The Minamata Convention on Mercury was adopted in 2013, and regulations on mercury emissions are becoming stricter all over the world. Coal combustion is one of the major mercury emission sources. The majority of mercury emissions from coal combustion is an elemental mercury. This is because oxidized mercury is water-soluble, but on the other hand elemental mercury is water-insoluble. In this study, we expected the De-NOx catalyst to have a mercury oxidation/capture performance and conducted mercury oxidation/capture experiment using the De-NOx catalyst as a sorbent. In the result, when HCl is present in the atmosphere, the De-NOx catalyst oxidized mercury and when HCl is not present in the atmosphere, the De-NOx catalyst showed high mercury capture performance. Furthermore, De-NOx catalyst maintained high mercury capture performance at a high temperature (743 K)

The present study assesses the CO₂ reduction potential by installing residential solar water heating (SWH) systems from a life-cycle perspective. The amount of CO₂ reduced through the replacement of conventional systems (i.e. oil boilers, gas boilers, electric heaters) with SWH systems is calculated on a municipal basis. The results reveal that municipalities where electric heaters are used extensively tend to have a high potential for CO₂ reduction.

The aim of the present study is to evaluate employment opportunities created by installing a water heating system with a wood chip boiler. We use a hybrid method that combines the process analysis and input-output analysis to estimate total employment opportunities across the life cycle. The estimated total employment is 37.4 [person-years] for 15 years. The direct and indirect employment accounts for 31% and 69% of the total, respectively.