The price of caking coal, which is used in the production of metallurgical coke, has risen in recent years. Also of concern is the amount of CO2 emitted from steel industries, comprising approximately 15% of total CO2 emissions in Japan. Therefore, CO2 emissions from the ironmaking process should be reduced to avoid global warming. In this work, fundamental research is conducted on the effect of adding woody biomass to the properties of coke, with the aim of possibly using woody biomass, which is carbon neutral, as a raw material in coke-making. Experimental results showed that the connectivity between coal particles in the coke sample during carbonization and coke strength drastically decrease by adding woody biomass to caking coal. However, the coke properties of the coke sample with added woody biomass could be improved by removing the partly volatile matter of woody biomass before mixing with caking coal, and as a result, the possibility of using woody biomass as a raw material for coke-making with prior carbonization at temperatures of more than 500°C was found.
We investigated whether methane, ethylene and ethane gas can be detected in gas emanating from human skin, which is called skin gas. Skin gas was collected with a homemade stainless-steel trap system, which was cooled with liquid nitrogen, and analyzed with a gas chromatograph fitted with a flame ionization detector (FID). Skin-gas samples were obtained by covering a hand for 30 min with a polyfluorovinyl bag in which pure helium gas was introduced. The bag, the trap system and GC were set up online to avoid any contamination by air. Methane, ethylene and ethane in skin gas were successfully collected at an average amount emanated for 30 min (from ten subjects) of 150 ± 63, 20 ± 11 and 17 ± 8 [mean ± SD] pg/cm 2 , respectively.
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