AWARDS

The 17th (2017) Green and Sustainable Chemistry Awards Winners

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Awarded by the Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry

Development of Low Environmental Load Battery for Idling Stop System Vehicle with High Charge Acceptance and High Durability

Hitachi Chemical Co., Ltd. and Hitachi, Ltd.

     Improvement of charge acceptance and durability has been required for battery that is loaded on Idling Stop System vehicle, because the battery has to supply electric power to vehicle and accept high regenerative power. New separator design which has specific non-woven fabric was adopted for the third generation battery "Tuflong G3" to control the sedimentation of sulfate ion. Therefore, "Tuflong G3" achieved high durability and realized "38 months and distance unlimited guarantee" which was the first of its kind in the battery industry for an Idling Stop System vehicle lead-acid battery. With battery made in Hitachi Chemical, the quantity of annual reduction of the greenhouse gas was estimated to be 750,000 tons by original simulation.

Awarded by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology

Flow-type Reaction-separation System for Complete Utilization of Unused Oil and Converting to High-value Products

Naomi KITAKAWA

Tohoku University

     Flow-type reaction-separation system was developed by connecting a plurality of columns packed with various porous ion-exchange resins in series. This system allowed the simultaneous production of high quality fatty acid ester, glycerin and vitamin E from unused oils. Furthermore, it is very effective to produce non-aqueous esters such as sugar fatty acid esters and pharmaceutical esters.

Awarded by the Minister of the Environment

Development of Novel Solution Styrene-butadiene Rubber for Fuel-efficient Tires

Asahi Kasei Corporation

     The fuel-efficient tires have become more significant in the tire industry from the viewpoint of energy saving and resource saving. Asahi Kasei has developed unique technology to introduce functional groups at the end of solution styrene butadiene rubber used as tire tread material. In addition, Asahi Kasei also established stable production technology for continuous polymerization process by utilizing unique polymer design and high molecular weight technology. This S-SBR can dramatically improve the fuel-saving performance of tires.

Incentive Award

Mass Production of Hydroxy-Polyurethane Resin using CO2 as a Raw Material and Their Commercialization

Dainichiseika Color & Chemicals Mfg. Co., Ltd.

     Hydroxy polyurethane resin (HPU) is a novel polyurethane resin produced from carbon dioxide as a raw material. We have been studying the industrialization of this HPU and its application. Recently, we established our original production system of HPU. And we also have developed a gravure ink and functional coating agent as to HPU applied product. In the future we aim to sell as environmentally friendly functional products. We hope to contribute to carbon dioxide reduction with this technology.

Incentive Award

Development of Thermal Storage Sheet Contributing to Energy Saving and Comfortable Temperature Space

Tomoyuki FURUKAWA, Ken-ichi FUJISAKI and Yuko KOSEKI

DIC Corporation

     We succeeded in developing a thermal storage sheet suppressing the leakage of heat storage material by establishing a technique of uniformly incorporating the latent heat storage material into the resin and making it to a sheet. This makes it possible to cut, bend and screw at the construction site which was difficult in the past, so it can be expected to greatly improve construction workability. In addition to housing and construction, we will also promote application development in various fields such as transportation and agriculture, and will contribute to promoting GSC.

Incentive Award

Development of Hybrid Metal Nanoparticle Catalysts for Environmentally Benign Molecular Transformations

Takato MITSUDOME

Osaka University

     Metal oxide-supported metal nanoparticle catalysts and core-shell nano-structured catalysts consisting of metal nanoparticles in the core and metal oxides in the shell were designed. These nanoparticle-oxide composite catalysts efficiently promoted various challenging molecular transformations such as aerobic oxidation of alcohols, mild hydrogenation of amides and chemoselective hydrogenations of nitrostyrenes to aminostyrenes, unsaturated aldehydes to allyl alcohols and alkynes to alkenes. These developed catalysts could be recovered from the reaction mixture by simple filtration, and were reusable with high catalytic activity.

Incentive Award

Catalysts Composed of Earth-Abundant Elements for Oxygen Electrochemical Reactions

Shunsuke YAGI(*1) and Ikuya YAMADA(*2)

(*1)The University of Tokyo, (*2)Osaka Prefecture University

     Oxygen electrochemical reactions are extensively utilized for energy conversions such as rechargeable metal−air batteries, fuel cells, and electrochemical water splitting. We demonstrated that the quadruple perovskite oxide CaCu3Fe4O12, composed of earth-abundant elements, exhibits a significantly high catalytic activity for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). We found that the quadruple perovskite structure enhances the catalytic activity for OER, and developed the bifunctional catalyst CaMn7O12 for both OER and oxygen reduction reaction.

Incentive Award

Development of Carbon Capture Materials Against Global Warming

Shinji KANEHASHI

Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology

     Carbon dioxide (CO2) capture remains a priority in many countries as the world seeks to address climate change. Polymeric membrane-based separation for CO2 capture is known as an advantageous cost-effective technology. Developed novel polymer hybrid materials composed of porous nanoparticles such as carbons, metal organic frameworks (MOFs), and porous organic polymers (POPs) show attractive CO2 separation performance even under the presence of impurities as well as interesting material properties as separation materials.

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