Innovative Polymeric Adsorbents

Kyoichi SAITO is a Professor at the Department of Applied Chemistry and Biotechnology, Chiba University, Chiba, Japan. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Tokyo. He has been researching the recovery and removal of metal ions and proteins using various forms of adsorbents prepared by radiation-induced graft polymerization. In these areas, he has published over 200 articles in various journals. Kunio FUJIWARA is the Division Manager of Research and Development at KJK Co., Takasaki, Japan. He worked at EBAEA Co. from 1973 to 2010, where he succeeded in commercializing chemical filters capable of removing trace amounts of impurities in air from ultraclean rooms of semiconductor fabrication plants. He was the first person to design and operate a continuous production system of materials by preirradiation grafting. He received his Ph.D. from Chiba University in 2015.  Takanobu SUGO is President of KJKCo., Takasaki, Japan. He started research on radiation chemistry at Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute in 1965. In 1986, he won the Award from the Director-General of the Science and Technology Agency, Japan, for the development of the diaphragm of alkaline batteries. He collected about 1 kg of uranium from seawater using an adsorbent-packed bed submerged in the Pacific Ocean in 1999. He founded KJK Co., Takasaki, Japan, in 1999. He received his Ph.D. from National Institution for Academic Degrees, Japan, in 2001.