Masao HORIBA Awards"Measurement of Bioparticles" and "Measurement of Internal Combustion"

Author: Masahiko Fijiwara; Naohito Shimizu – Real-time measurement is essential to the effective control of NOx emissions from plants that burn fossil fuels. After reviewing the conventional stack emission measurement lines, we developed a new NOx analyzer system, the HORIBA ENDA-2000H, which responds to changes in NOx concentration within 20 seconds and needs minimal maintenance. This paper describes improvements of the analyzerhardware, the cyclone dust filter, and the sample probe employed in the ENDA-2000H. It also describes dust conditons in the sample examined based on particle size distribution analysis. (Same content in Japanese is in Readout No.14-Japanese edition-.)

Author: Yasuhiro Awatsuji – The author invented and developed a technique capable of three-dimensional image measurement for moving objects. The technique has been called as parallel digital holography and carries out phase-shifting interferometry simultaneously using space-division multiplexing of the reference wave in digital holography. The space-division multiplexing is implemented by a phase-shifting device array. The validity of the technique was confirmed by a preliminary experiment. It was also confirmed that the microscopy using this technique is capabile of three-dimensional image measurement of cells.

Author: Fumiyoshi Abe – High hydrostatic pressure has an adverse influence in organisms that inhabit atmospheric pressure environments. In yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, pressure in the range of 15-25 MPa markedly impairs the uptake of tryptophan, and thereby it limits growth of tryptophan auxotrophic strains. The susceptibility of tryptophan import is attributable to the dynamic structural change in tryptophan permease in the plasma membrane. Studies of mutants capable of growth at high pressure reveal that tryptophan permeases Tat1 and Tat2 undergo ubiquitin-dependent degradation when cells are exposed to high pressure. We suggest that hydrostatic pressure is a unique tool for probing the dynamic function and regulation of amino acid permeases in living yeast cells.

Author: Christopher T. Culbertson – We are developing techniques to culture and analyze single non-adherent cells on microfluidic devices. The microfluidic modules will be capable of culturing up to 20,000 cells over a period of several days. The cells are arranged in such a way that one of the daughter cells after each division will be released for downstream analysis. The released daughter cells are transported through a channel manifold where they can be subjected to external stimuli in order to examine how they respond. The cells can then be incubated and transported to an area of the chip where they will be lysed. The lysate is then separated and the components of interest detected and quantified.

Author: Tetsuya Aizawa – In order to develop clean next-generation diesel engines with ultra-low exhaust particulation emission, it is important to fully understand the soot formation processes occuring in the spray flame in the engine cylinder. The authors employed laser spectroscopy and imaging techniques to examine when and where the formation and growth of soot precursors occur in the diesel spray flame. The chemical composition and the growth processes of the soot precursors were further investigated by a newly-developted laser-spectroscopic technique called Excitation-Emission Matrix (EEM) using a multi-wavelength excitation laser source. The examination of diesel spray flame using the EEM technique revealed that the formation and growth of soot precursors can be delayed or suppressed by lowering the ambient temperatures and oxygen concentration in the cylinder.

Author: Olfert Jason – Particles from internal combustion engines are known to reduce visibility, harm human health, and affect climate. A new instrument called the Couette centrifugal particle mass analyzer (Couette CPMA) has been developed to measure the mass of nano-particles. A unique system of forces allows for particle mass measurements over a wide range with high resolution. The Couette CPMA was used to measure the effective density, fractal dimension, and mass concentration of particles emitted from a light-duty diesel vehicle.

Author: David A Rothamer – This article focuses on a new diagnostic technique that has been developed to study the influence of the exhaust gas residuals and temperature distributions on homogeneous-charge compression-ignition (HCCI) combustion. The technique utilizes two-wavelength excitation of a fluorescence tracer species (3-pentanone) to take high-fidelity snapshots of the in-cylinder distributions of EGR and temperature inside firing optical engines. The development of the diagnostic was moti-vated by the need to understand the influence of incylinder mixture stratification on the HCCI combustion process.

Author: Nobuyuki Kawahara – Cycle-resolved measurements of the fuel/ residual gas concentration near a spark plug in a practical sparkignition (SI) engine have been developed. An in situ laser infrared (IR) absorption method was applied using a spark plug sensor and a 3.392-μm He-Ne laser or an infrared lamp as the light source. The newly developed IR spark plug sensor had a higher signal-to-noise ratio than its previous version due to the optimization of its sapphire lens and two optical fibers. Mixture formation process near the spark-plug and relationship between fuel concentration and combustion characteristics could be investigated in Wankel rotary engine, and high boost diesel engine using developed IR sensor system.

HORIBA Ltd. established the “Masao Horiba Award,” named after the founder, on the fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of the company. Selection theme of the Masao Horiba Award for 2007 was “Measurement of Bioparticles”, and the selection theme for 2008 was “Measurement of Internal Combustion”. Of the various outstanding applicants, three winners were selected in 2007 and four in 2008. This report outlines the purpose of the Masao Horiba Award, application and selection process, and the award ceremony.

Author: Yuichiro Komatsu; Katsunobu Ehara; Katsuaki Ogura – Multi-parameter water quality checker named U-50 capable of simultaneously measuring turbidity, dissolved oxygen, conductivity, pH, oxidation-reduction potential (ORP), water depth, and temperature was developed. This series equipped with the high-sensitivity turbidity meter compliant with EPA Method 180.1, and the easy-tomaintain dissolved oxygen electrode. The dissolved oxygen electrode and conductivity features an expanded measurement range for high concentrations. Compared to the earlier model U-20, usability improvements were made to the GPS function, simultaneous display of all parameters, and data storage function. The U-50 series is expected to provide a new measurement application which was not able to be handled by the U-20.

Author: Hiroshi Iida – The Optical Emission Spectroscopy (OES) is major monitoring principle for detecting the process endpoint from signal trend changing of plasma emission in the process chamber of semiconductor manufacturing. The endpoint detection capability is improved by a CCD spectrograph which is able to use the wide range optical spectrum. But the CCD spectrograph brings difficulty of the analyzing operation to build the process endpoint condition due to huge data volume of wide range spectrum. And process users request also the capability of training a lot of data from manufacturing process. We explain about a practical example of the plasma emission endpoint monitor on manufacturing process in this article.

Author: Seiji Sakakura – Recently, silicon has attracted attention as not only the semiconductor but also as a material for the solar cells. It is known that impurities such as oxygen and the carbon exist in silicon, and there impurities are known to affect its electrical properties. So it is important to control its concentration in low concentration level. Oxygen/ Nitrogen analyzer EMGA series and Carbon/Sulfur analyzer EMIA series has been recognized as a measuring device capable of rapid and accurate in low level of time, and various application developments have been also done in the long history. In this study, we introduce new measurement application of oxygen and carbon in silicon for solar cells as an example of the application.

Author: Tomoki Aoyama – The author, who is a staff member of Horiba Ltd., stayed for one year at Showa Station, Antarctica as a member of the 49th Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition (JARE49th) and observed atmospheric particulate matter with an XGT-5000WR X-ray analytical microscope. This was the first time that particulate matter had been analyzed at Showa Station using an X-ray analytical microscope, and this paper is a preliminary report of the analysis.

Author: Satoshi Ohtsuki – CAD-CAE team of Information Technology Dept. in Products Design & Engineering Center is engaged in CAE calculations for products designs as one of the main works. We have put importance in them to find out from CAE results the technical information and the directions in which designs should take for high quality products. IN order to carry out them and be always ready to reply requests from wider engineering fields than before, it is necessary for CAE team to understand basic mechanical engineering knowledge more deeply and continue to make an effort to widen our skills for CAE. Through such our team thought as describe above, study of the transient motion of capillarity in constant section tubes is introduced in this paper as one example in which the technical information were got by the theoretical analysis before using CAE and afterword the results were compared with ones got by CAE calculations.

Author: Kazuma Koyama – The European environmental regulations on products have been increasing its impacts in North and South America and Asian countries, and they are becoming global standards as intended by EU*1. Therefore, nowadays, working on such regulations appropriately is one of major business tasks for global companies. The essential point of this issue is that it’s not only a matter of compliance, but these environmental regulations clearly spur companies to technological competition. Four years have passed since the entry into force of the RoHS*2 Directive. However, the directive is still under development, so a lot of companies are continuing lobbying activities on it with great concern. With the background mentioned above, this paper will discuss how each company is able to deal effectively with those regulations focusing on the current progress of the European chemical regulations such as the RoHS Directive and the REACH*3 Regulation. *1: The European Union. *2: The Restriction of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment Regulation. *3: Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemical Substances.

Author: Hyosuke Yonezawa; Tomoya Kumauchi; Mitsuko Shima – Product design is just as important as technology that achieves products’ target performance and functionality, when developing a product. This report introduces HORIBA product design team’s works and activities in the process of designing new products. First, we will explain “What HORIBA design aims at”, and then “Our approaches and outputs with Omoi, the thought that we want to express through the product design”.