Japan market development

In the near future, UV photodiodes made from polycrystalline wide band-gap semiconductors may fill the gap in the market. Although they have a lower sensitivity (photocurrent per area) they promise to have a better merit-rating in terms of photocurrent per sensor costs. The other major drawback of polycrystalline photodiodes, the risetime of micro- to milliseconds, is not relevant for household applications. Fuji Xerox Laboratories in Japan are developing visible-blind UV photodiodes made from polycrystalline GaN [12], while twlux AG in Berlin, Germany is developing visible-blind UV photodiodes made from polycrystalline titanium dioxide [13]. A prototype is shown in Fig. 5.45. 

Japan is the largest consumer of biodegradable polymers in the Asia Pacific region, followed by Australia and New Zealand, with Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and China, some way behind in terms of market development. 

Michael J. Balow General Manager, Market Development and Technology, Montell-JPO Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan... 

In Europe, the replacement rate of reusable products by single-use products is about 30%. It is expected that this conversion rate will increase as newer and more cost-effective nonwovens which deliver superior performance are developed. Japan, South America and Australia, should behave similarly. The single-use medical product markets in the USA and Europe can be traced to a number of similar market developments. Growing at an almost equal rate, the US market is... 

A major event in the history of acetal homopolymer was the announcement of commercialization of Tenac acetal homopolymer by Asahi on September 1, 1972. Since then, market development with Tenac in Japan has successfully competed with metal in typical engineering applications. Asahi Chemical Co. has been sensitive to market needs and their search for new compositions has led to a broad product line. Details on the product line and a recent Asahi development will be covered in the following section on the decade of the 1980 s. 

Plastic automobile bumpers entered Indian market along with the Maruti car production in India. Initially, the bumpers were molded in India with an imported blend from Japan. The development and commercialization of the high impact polyolefin blend came as a break-through in achieving self-reliance in polymer blend technology in Indian industry as the import of this blend from Japan was halted. 

The commercialization by Kureha Chemical Co. of Japan of a new, highly attrition-resistant, activated-carbon adsorbent as Beaded Activated Carbon (BAC) allowed development of a process employing fluidized-bed adsorption and moving-bed desorption for removal of volatile organic carbon compounds from air. The process has been marketed as GASTAK in Japan and as PURASIV HR (91) in the United States, and is now marketed as SOLD ACS by Daikin Industries, Ltd. 

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy. Bmker s database, designed for use with its spectrophotometers, contains 20,000 C-nmr and H-nmr, as weU as a combined nmr-ms database (66). Sadder Laboratories markets a PC-based system that can search its coUection of 30,000 C-nmr spectra by substmcture as weU as by peak assignments and by fiiU spectmm (64). Other databases include one by Varian and a CD-ROM system containing polymer spectra produced by Tsukuba University, Japan. CSEARCH, a system developed at the University of Vieima by Robien, searches a database of almost 16,000 C-nmr. Molecular Design Limited (MDL) has adapted the Robien database to be searched in the MACCS and ISIS graphical display and search environment (63). Projects are under way to link the MDL system with the Sadder Hbrary and its unique search capabiHties. 

In the United States, fibers and injection mol ding are the main appHcations for polypropylene (Table 8), followed by film. In Europe and Japan, injection mol ding appHcations predominate (Table 10). This market area is more likely to decline in economic recession, as consumers postpone purchases of apphances and automobiles. Film appHcations are important in both regions, but fibers are a much less important use for polypropylene in Japan than in other developed regions. The heavy use of polypropylene nonwovens in the manufacture of disposable diapers and similar products, and the wide use of polypropylene carpets in the United States, account for the greater consumption of fibers. 

In Japan, scrap tires are used to fuel Pordand cement kilns. The process was developed by the Bridgestone Tire Company and has increased gready in importance since 1980. The Saitama plant (Nihon Co., Ltd) bums 140,000 tires, as weU as oil, per month to produce 258,300 t of cement (qv) per month (17). Cemenergy (Loomis, California) and Emanuel Tire Company (Baltimore, Maryland) cement companies and paper mills bum scrap tires to produce process energy (18,19). It has been predicted that 238 million passenger and tmck tires wUl be consumed by the energy market aimuaUy by 1997 (20). 

Nonformaldehyde Finishing. The concern for formaldehyde release prompted interest in the development of cross-linking systems that did not contain formaldehyde. A number of systems were investigated but generally these systems seemed to fall short in performance (106,107). For example, l,3-dimethyl-4,5-dihydroxyethyleneurea (DMeDHEU) (5) has been used in Japan since 1974. This same agent has been marketed in the United States and elsewhere, but generally the level of smooth-dry performance is substantially lower than the level achievable with DMDHEU. The cost of dimethylurea also raises the overall cost of DMeDHEU above that of DMDHEU. 

Pepiomycin is marketed in Japan and was in clinical trials in the United States in 1990 lihlomycin is at an early stage of development. Others include taHysomycin A [65057-90-1J, reported in 1977, which was in clinical development at one time (240), and phleomycin [11006-33-0], reported in 1956 (241), which was too toxic for dmg use. 

The pattern of commercial production of 1,3-butadiene parallels the overall development of the petrochemical industry. Since its discovery via pyrolysis of various organic materials, butadiene has been manufactured from acetylene as weU as ethanol, both via butanediols (1,3- and 1,4-) as intermediates (see Acetylene-DERIVED chemicals). On a global basis, the importance of these processes has decreased substantially because of the increasing production of butadiene from petroleum sources. China and India stiU convert ethanol to butadiene using the two-step process while Poland and the former USSR use a one-step process (229,230). In the past butadiene also was produced by the dehydrogenation of / -butane and oxydehydrogenation of / -butenes. However, butadiene is now primarily produced as a by-product in the steam cracking of hydrocarbon streams to produce ethylene. Except under market dislocation situations, butadiene is almost exclusively manufactured by this process in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan. 

Oxamide is produced commercially by Ube Industries, Ltd. (Japan) and a pilot process is being operated by Enichem (Italy). It is not produced domestically as a commercial fertilizer, although it was the subject of much research and development activity by the Tennessee Valley Authority s (TVA) National Fertilizer Research and Development Center. It is made in small quantities for industrial use by AUied Chemical, Hummel Chemical Co., and United Guardian, Inc. Oxamide has appHcation as a controlled release nitrogen source for the turf and specialty agricultural markets. 

New efficient vulcanization systems have been introduced in the market based on quaternary ammonium salts initially developed in Italy (29—33) and later adopted in Japan (34) to vulcanize epoxy/carboxyl cure sites. They have been found effective in chlorine containing ACM dual cure site with carboxyl monomer (43). This accelerator system together with a retarder (or scorch inhibitor) based on stearic acid (43) and/or guanidine (29—33) can eliminate post-curing. More recently (47,48), in the United States a proprietary vulcanization package based on zinc diethyldithiocarbamate [14324-55-1]... 

Today about 75% of the market is held by General Electric and Bayer with their products Lexan and Makrolon respectively. Other manufacturers are ANIC (Italy), Taijin Chemical Co., Mitsubishi Edogawa and Idemitsu Kasei in Japan and, since 1985, Dow (USA) and Policarbonatos do Brasil (Brazil). Whilst this market is dominated by bis-phenol A polycarbonates, recent important developments include alloys with other thermoplastics, polyester carbonates and silicone-polycarbonate block copolymers. 

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