The Iwatani R&D Center completed last May in Amagasaki City of Hyogo Prefecture now celebrates the first anniversary. Under the concept of an open research center for joint development with partners like users and manufacturers in the glassy demonstration rooms, the new R&D center had 6000 visitors from 3000 companies in total more than expected during one year after establishment. More than ten themes for new joint research have already started practically and there were some concrete themes accomplished in the welding and LH2-related fields.

Iwatani invested about 4 billion yen to construct the new center aiming to reinforce and develop the function of its old Shiga Technical Center. Thanks to the easy access of less than 20 minutes from Itami Airport or Shin-Osaka Station for Shinkansen line, the new center was full of visitors including those just for chaffing throughout last year.

Shinji Murai, general manager of the Center pointed out the sales staff’s enthusiastic calls of Iwatani to customers saying “Why don’t you just drop in at our new R&D Center?” which resulted in such a large number of visitors.
Some technical fruits were born out of the interests of those visitors. In the welding field, for example, we notice the sheet metal joining method which aims to seek an optimum welding condition for galvanized steel sheets in the automobile industry now requiring thinner sheets. The center has been tackling this theme with welding-related equipment manufacturers based upon the request brought by automobile manufacturers. The accomplishment has led to the new brazing sheet joining method.

A variety of visitors to the center did not consist of only those being interested in a joint research with Iwatani, but a visitor came to take a look at the R&D center seeking a model for planning to build his own research laboratory. Although the appearance of the new R&D center is similar to that of general office buildings, a number of high-pressure gas pipes are put around and provided with the scrubbers and leak detecting systems in the building conforming strictly to the related regulations, so that various experiments can be done using gases appropriately. In general any industrial R&D bases require quite a few high-pressure gas equipment. The said visitor tried to study how to take safety and environmental measures. The safety systems and high-pressure equipment also belong to the business lineup. It means that the research center itself is a demonstrative model of laboratory using high-pressure gases.

H2 Station to open in coming July

As reputed as “Iwatani of Hydrogen,” Iwatani is well equipped with the top-ranked testing environments in Japan on hydrogen especially of LH2. In the LH2 experiment building inside the center premise, demonstrative experiments are being on the way to draw up the guideline for construction of hydrogen stations of LH2 type which is being proceeded by JIMGA (Japan Industrial and Medical Gases Association).

As a matter of fact, there is nearly no place in Japan where the actual leakage of LH2 can be applied in an experiment. It is also well-reputed that tests are carried out safely in a flexible way.

At the space adjacent to the R&D center a commercial hydrogen station for fuel cell vehicles (Amagasaki H2 Station) is under construction now, and will open as the first domestic commercial station in July of this year. At the commercializing stage of the station it is necessary to build up a system to secure the quality of hydrogen. On consignment of NEDO, the research center is developing an analyzer to measure at the same time two or more contents of trace impurities such as sulfur components in hydrogen gas.

As Iwatani Corporation is doing wide-ranged business related to energy, materials and food other than industrial gas many themes taken up by the research center naturally may traverse the four business categories. In fact, during the past one year, ten themes for joint development were added. Murai expressed his wishes, saying “The center aims to be a hub of the four business categories of Iwatani to create a source for new products and business models.”

(Photo: The Iwatani R&D Center and H2 station under construction)