JRC REVIEW No.75 2024 Technical Reports

- Topics : Contributing to a carbon-neutral society -

Improving the availability of offshore wind turbines is essential to ensure a stable supply of electricity from offshore wind power generation. Stable operation and maintenance (O&M) of offshore wind turbines are important to improve their availability. However, when O&M workers transfer to offshore wind turbines by small vessels, they often have to abandon their work due to weather and sea conditions to ensure worker safety. Therefore, JRC has applied its 6-axis motion base technology, cultivated through the development of flight simulators and driving simulators over many years, to motion compensation control, and has developed Japan's first offshore facility access gangway systems for small vessels that are less affected by weather and sea conditions when transferring to offshore wind turbines.

Hiroya Mizutani
Keitaro Ogawa
Toshiyuki Inoue
Katsutoshi Sugi
Masaru Ishikawa

- Topics : Contributing to a carbon-neutral society -

JRC has constructed a Marine Coordination Center (MCC) system to safely and efficiently support the building, operation, and maintenance of offshore wind power generation facilities, which are accelerated to be introduced in the future. This system consists of various monitoring systems such as port surveillance radar, weather/oceanographic monitors, surveillance cameras, wind turbine power generation status monitoring, etc., and constantly monitors the status of offshore wind power generation and the surrounding sea area, as well as manages system safety. In constructing the system, JRC collaborated with SeaRoc, which owns the group software "SeaPlanner," which accounts for approximately 70% of the market share in the offshore wind power generation business in the UK. This system will also contribute to regional development and fisheries cooperation as a business development focused on coexistence with the local community.

Masahiko Takamatsu
Hiroo Naruse
Daisuke Takada
Ryo Hikata

- Topics : Contributing to a carbon-neutral society -

Hydrogen fuel cells are used to extract electricity from hydrogen and utilize it as energy. Among fuel cells, Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells (PEFCs) are expected to be utilized in mobile vehicles because of their advantages such as a small decrease in power generation efficiency due to miniaturization and easy startup and shutdown due to operation at low temperatures. While PEFCs have these advantages, they also have the problem of low output due to the low reaction rate of Oxygen Reduction Reaction (ORR) at the cathode (positive electrode). Nisshinbo Holdings attempt to solve this problem by developing a “carbon alloy catalyst” that uses carbon as the main raw material, which can be produced stably, and does not use expensive platinum. To strengthen our development capabilities and accelerate development, Nisshinbo Holdings has been applying Digital Transformation (DX) in the development of “carbon alloy catalysts” at an early stage, and as one of the results, Nisshinbo Holdings developed a performance simulator that predicts battery performance by quantum chemical calculation and simple measurement of the catalyst. The developed simulator predicts that “Element X,” which has not been focused on so far, is effective in improving catalytic activity. Currently, development has been continuing to implement “Element X” in the simulator.

Nisshinbo Holdings Inc.
Takuya Maie
Yuji Kubota

- Technical articles -

In anticipation of the market deployment of private LTE systems and local 5G systems, JRC has developed a portable LTE base station equipment (Tactical LTE Box) that is compliant with Military Specifications and Standards (MIL) to provide a system that enables an easy deployment of wireless areas for mission-critical fields such as public safety, defense, public utilities, oil, gas, mining, dams, and power plants in various countries. This equipment complies with MIL standards for vibration resistance, which is required especially in the fields of public safety maintenance and defense where the equipment needs to travel on rough unpaved roads, and for environmentally resistant performance to operate even in cold regions (-32°C), and it also complies with the IP67 waterproof performance to prevent malfunction even if accidentally submerged in water during transportation. In addition, in consideration of use in various countries around the world, the power amplifier has been designed to realize a wider bandwidth so that it can cover multiple bands (Bands 14, 20, 28) in the 700 MHz band to support frequencies allocated to each country or user. This equipment designed as a compact all-in-one architecture that integrates all units in the same enclosure, and by simply pressing the power button, an LTE communication area can be deployed, enabling for example high-quality video calls.

Yasushi Tabei
Toshiyuki Maeda
Koichi Hasegawa
Sadayuki Katsumata

- Technical articles -

JRC has developed a prototype hydrogen gas generator by steam reforming an ethanol aqueous solution, which is widely used in society as a biomass fuel, and verified its operation. To increase the energy-saving effect during the hydrogen generation process, a microwave heating method was adopted for the steam reforming process, which consumes a lot of energy. In the process of generating hydrogen from an ethanol aqueous solution, it is unavoidable that carbon monoxide is generated at the same time as hydrogen, which causes a significant decrease in the performance of Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells (PEFC, hereafter), so it was essential to reduce the carbon monoxide concentration for the practical application of this device. Moreover, there were various issues to be addressed, including improving the efficiency of chemical reactions in the device and speeding up the start-up of the device. JRC has attempted to solve these issues by prototyping and optimizing devices to solve these issues. The prototype hydrogen generator was integrated with a hydrogen purifier to create a system, and the amount of purified hydrogen and power consumption for the operation of the device were visualized. The following is a description of the prototype and evaluation of this device conducted by JRC.

Kenichiro Urayama
Osamu Sato
Takayuki Onishi

- Technical articles -

The X-band solid-state radar for ships features lower maintenance costs and high target detection performance compared with conventional magnetron radars. JRC has developed an X-band solid-state radar in a two-unit configuration that uses MFD as a display unit, which has a proven track record as an existing product. This radar complies with the IMO performance standard with a transmitting peak power of 600 W and can detect reflected signals from targets buried in clutter (reflected signals from sea surfaces, rain, and snow) with high probability by taking advantage of the features of solid-state radar. Based on these results, JRC has achieved superior detection performance for small targets such as fishing boats and buoys compared to conventional magnetron radars. The improvement of radar performance, which is a key sensor, is essential to realizing autonomous navigation of ships, which is increasingly required by society, and this development is expected to contribute greatly to society in the future.

Toshihiro Saito
Masaru Kawaguchi

- Group Companies Technical articles -

JRCM has developed a next-generation ultrasonic sensor for automotive applications that achieves “collision prevention,” which is essential for realizing autonomous driving and unmanned operation of automobiles. Compared with conventional ultrasonic sensors, this sensor realizes detection from “more distant objects (obstacles)” to “more nearby objects (obstacles)” and more accurate distance measurement to obstacles, thereby increasing safety in scenes such as automatic parking and unattended automated valet parking, and reducing the risk of accidents in which cars collide with an obstacle. The Next-generation ultrasonic sensors increase the number of waves in the signal (the number of ultrasonic waves) to enable detection and distance measurement of more distant objects than conventional ultrasonic sensors. By applying a workaround for the Doppler frequency shift, which is a disincentive, the relative velocity between the sensor and the object can also be measured, reducing the risk of collisions with obstacles. In addition, the reverberation of the sensor has been suppressed to enable detection and distance measurement of more nearby objects. Short-time learning (repeated measurements to search for optimal values) is performed to minimize reverberation, and variables are automatically optimized for each sensor. Furthermore, by using different codes with low cross-correlation when modulating the ultrasonic waves used for distance measurement, distance measurement can be performed simultaneously using two ultrasonic sensors, and the possibility of shortening the distance measurement time is also shown.

JRC Mobility Inc.
Koji Fukino
Shinji Sugimura
Takaaki Ishikawa
Tesshin Yamashita
Hisayoshi Abe

- Group Companies Technical articles -

NJ Components developed a multilayer power inductor using Ni-Zn (nickel-zinc) ferrite in 2003 and successfully put it into practical use for cell phones. Since then, NJ Components has continued to develop products emphasizing “compact,” “low profile,” “low loss,” and “high DC superposition characteristics”. With the spread of smartphones in recent years, the focus of needs for power inductors has shifted to “supporting large currents”. Based on these needs, NJ Components has developed a new power inductor to realize a “ferrite multilayer type power inductor supporting large currents”. The challenge during development was to suppress the magnetic saturation that occurs inside the power inductor when current flows. NJ Components has incorporated a “hard ferrite (permanent magnet)” into the power inductance and adopted a method of applying a magnetic bias to prevent magnetic saturation inside the inductor.

NJ Components Co., Ltd.
Kenji Okuda
Kiyohisa Yamauchi
Mikio Kitaoka