Watching the Environmental and Society with Measurements

Author: Toshiya HIGASHINO – It is said that the earth was born 4.6 billion years ago. The modern-day earth was formed by deformations in its crust and climate changes, and the water and air cycles that are the source of life exist in an exquisite balance that has given rise to the diverse life thriving on this planet. In the long history of the earth, it has only been in the past 200 years since the industrial revolution that there has been a focus on environmental pollution problems. If we calculate the length of time since the birth of the earth as 1 day, these 200 years would be equivalent to only 0.004 seconds out of that day. While the lives of humans have become more abundant as scientific technology has developed, those activities have begun to destroy the exquisite balance of nature and are affecting the global environment. Initially, these problems were handled as being localized issues in specific regions, but currently, environmental problems are considered to be problems on a global scale, such as climate change effects like global warming, destruction of the ozone layer, the sudden, localized summer downpours known as guerrilla rainstorms, and super typhoons, the radioactive pollution caused by accidents at nuclear power plants, water pollution, air pollution such as PM2.5, effects on food safety and ecosystems caused by chemical substances, depletion of the world’s water resources, food supply problems, and energy problems.

Author: Shinya NAKAMURA; Satoshi INOUE; Katsunobu EHARA; Naoto BANDO – The process and environmental business has changed as the industry has developed. In the stage after high economic growth, environmental pollution such as air and water pollution became more serious, and environmental regulations and ordinances have been put into effect. To meet the requirements in these regulations, the HORIBA Group has incorporated new technology into its core technologies, Non-Dispersive Infrared analysis (NDIR) and pH meter technology, and has developed analyzers that meet the needs of the environmental analysis market. In 2011, the hydrogen explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake scattered radioactive substances around Fukushima Prefecture. At the time, the HORIBA Group quickly donated radiation meters to the local government, and contributed to the city residents’ ability to measure radiation.

Author: Naoki OHKUMA – Water reuse markets are forecasted to expand rapidly against the background of population growth and urbanization inemerging and developing countries. When using reclaimed water, it is important to evaluate the health of users, as well assafety and reliability at the location of use. Membrane technology is indispensable and is widely used ; it is a technology in which Japan is considered to have superiority. Against this background, Technical Committee ISO/TC282 “Water Reuse” was established in June 2013. Japan is currently the secretariat, and the first General Meeting was held in Tokyo in January 2014. This report reviews the status of water reuse and related international standardization.

Author: Yusuke MIZUNO – Recently, the Asian countries face environmental pollution with economic growth. Especially air pollution such as PM2.5 is recognized as transnational common issues and Asian countries are dealing with the air pollution problem through intergovernmental cooperation. We describe the features of APDA-375A and the possibility of combined Analyzer as key to the PM2.5 air pollution.

Author: Hiroshi KANDA – The "H-1Link" that I proposed and designed changes water our quality instrument business from unit sales to the total service. HORIBA received contacts to supply products to some customers. The amount of sales is limited to a narrow range. It was necessary to make a new approach for potential customers with new solutions for maintenance and system control. The paper describes my new wireless application with “H-1Link” Some major companies accepted our proposal to use to H-1Link achieve a remote service with cloud networks.

Author: Akio ISHI; Yuichi ITO; Hiroaki MURAKAMI – Because the electric power for the air blower to be used for the aeration tank on sewage plant is large, an adequate blower control with ammonia nitrogen concentration is expected. The ion electrode method enables continuous measurement. However the instability of the ion electrode method often is an issue for applying the process control. The cause of the instability is that the inner solution of ion electrode is diluted. The control of the osmotic pressure of the inner solution prevents diluting inner solution. The prototype was installed in a sewage water plant for a long term stability test and stable measurement was confirmed.

Author: Yoshihiko KAWAGUCHI; Reiji KOJIMA – In sewage and industrial wastewater treatment facilities, monitoring the concentration of organic material is important for operation and maintenance. However, even if the Total Organic Carbon (TOC) in the wastewater is the same, it is known that there will be differences in the water quality after the process. For that reason, it is important to understand the component groups that make up the Dissolved Organic Matter (DOM), as well as their prevalence. In this study, we measured the Chromophoric Dissolved Organic Matter (CDOM) in each sample using three-dimensional Excitation-Emission Matrices (EEM) and the Parallel Factor Analysis Method (PARAFAC), and analyzed the behavior of each component group in wastewater treatment processes using a membrane bioreactor method. We then compared our results with Specific Ultraviolet Absorption (SUVA) and PARAFAC analysis results, which are used as relative indicators of recalcitrant organic matter.

Author: Ryota KOSAKA; Yuji NISHIO – Oil is a commonly used material which is essential for mankind’s activity. Thus, it is necessary to measure and control oil content for its effective use. HORIBA’s OCMA-500 series and OCMA-550 series have achieved easy and accurate measurements by extracting oil to a solvent. In this article, we introduce some applications of oil extraction and measurement using OCMA-550 series, discussing the significance of each case. Specifically four difficult samples that require special technique for the extraction, which are oil in soil, residual oil on metal parts after being cut, residual oil on surgical instruments and oil in rice (rice balls from a store), are shown with detailed explanation regarding the setting of extraction time and removal of detergent-like substances.

Author: Atsushi IEKI – Mass Flow Controllers (MFC) with thermal flow sensors are widely accepted in the semiconductor industry for the control of process gas flow. New semiconductor manufacturing technologies require MFCs to improve fast process gas flow response capability and response reproducibility to improve throughput and yield. The design of control systems for MFCs is critical for speeding up the flow response, as well as maintaining constant responsiveness during the manufacture of MFCs. This paper proposes a method for designing a control system using Internal Model Control and shows the availability of the proposed method based on the experiment results.

Author: Kazuya SHAKUDO – In recent years, along with the trend for scaling-down of semiconductor processes and increasing wafer diameters, there is a demand for higherperformance gas supply systems. In order to meet such a demand, we developed a pressure-based mass flow module, CRITERION D500. The D500 employs a differential pressure flow measurement system for a flowmeasuring unit in a linear flow viscous flow range. Therefore, a highly accurate flow measurement and flow control over a wide flow range for process gas can be achieved. The D500 is equipped with G-LIFE function to diagnose process gas flow changes thereby enabling diagnosis during the process. Accordingly, defective semiconductor wafers due to failure of the mass flow control module can be minimized by using the D500, which is a mass flow module with a selfdiagnosis function essential for the next-generation process.

Author: Ichiro NISHIKAWA – Recent semiconductor manufacturing processes are designed not only to miniaturize the device structure, but also to accommodate newly developed materials and to improve the productivity, with further consideration of increasing the wafer diameter to 450 mm. In conjunction with these trends, liquid materials used in semiconductor manufacturing are further diversified and processed in a larger flow volume. Market demand for vaporizers includes vaporization of a large flow volume, lower temperature vaporization, and reduction in the carrier gas flow used. This paper provides an introduction to a high efficiency mixed injection system, the MV-2000, with significantly improved vaporization performance compared to existing products to meet market needs.

Author: Hidetaka YADA – In order to accommodate higher performance of semiconductor devices, higher efficiency process, and improvement of the productivity, we developed the XF series, a pressure type mass flow meter with a measurement method fully renewed for the first time in a quarter century. The XF series is equipped with oil-free safe pressure sensors of the electrostatic capacitance type, thereby enabling a single path structure even in a flow range of 5 g/min or more. This may also reduce flow errors due to residence of bubbles. The XF series also achieves an improved sensor linearity and an accuracy of ±0.8% F.S. by using physical property values of materials in the flow conversion formula, which corresponds to an improvement of 20% compared to existing meters. A faster response within 0.8 sec is also achieved, enabling a reduction in time for the flow rate to be stable by speeding up the time, which contributes to a reduction in the amount of use of expensive high-technology materials.

Author: Kenji HARA – Nitrous Oxide (N2O) emission reduction has gained large prominence recently due to its contribution to the climate change as a greenhouse gas. The United States Environment Protection Agency together with the United States Department of Transport has already regulated the N2O emissions from Light-Duty Vehicles and Heavy-Duty Engines. N2O measurement should be done from sample storage bags. Performance requirement of the analyzer is to be able to measure N2O gas concentration of sub-ppb order. N2O gas analyzer, QLN2O has been developed as one analyzer for integrated to MEXA-ONE. QLN2O is utilizing Quantum Cascade Laser and this analyzer can measure N2O concentration of ten ppb order.

Author: Naohiro OHSUGA; Yasuo FURUKAWA – We developed the infrared thermometer “IT-470F-H” specialized for temperature measurement in the dry etching equipment. Infrared sensor is the most core technology of the infrared thermometer. The infrared sensor installed into “IT- 470F-H” is developed utilizing our original MEMS technology. The infrared sensor has higher responsivity and shorter response time than our previous sensor. With the infrared sensor, the repeatability improves to 0.1°C which is one-third of our previous infrared thermometer (IT-470A). Furthermore, the stability to transient change of ambient temperature improves very well.