Last week Susumu Mochida of JFRC Member Nippon Furnace KK Ltd succeeded Tetsuo Akiyama as the Japanese Flame Research Committee representative on the IFRF Joint Committee. This succession was proposed by Tetsuo Akiyama at the 152nd Meeting of the Joint Committee, held at Velsen-Noord on 7th December 2005. The Joint Committee readily accepted this proposal and welcoming him and simultaneously thanking Tetsuo Akiyama for his strong contributions to the work of the Joint Committee.

Tetsuo Akiyama

The co-operation between the IFRF and  Tetsuo Akiyama commenced in 1978 when he became the first Japanese Investigator at the IFRF Research Station at the time the JFRC became a full National Committee member of the IFRF Joint Committee.  Tetsuo had a successful career at IJmuiden working on NOx reduction with pulverised coal and heavy fuel oil firing.  He was promoted in this task by Chogai Ro of Osaka, the company he rejoined after completing his work at IJmuiden.   In time he became Director of the Board of Chogai Ro and eventually towards the end of the 1990s he became the JFRF representative on the IFRF Joint Committee where worked hard to guide the IFRF through the ongoing process of redevelopment.

Susumu Mochida

Susumu Mochida is the Manager of the Nippon Furnace Research and Development Department. He graduated in 1982 with the degree of Bachelor of Engineering from the Department of Chemical Engineering of Chuo University, Tokyo, Japan, eventually joining the R&D staff of Nippon Furnace in Yokohama.

In the 1990s and the present decade, he has been occupied in R&D in the field of highly preheated air combustion, development and upgrade of regenerative burners based on analysis of flow modeling tests and combustion tests results. In time he was leading the experiments, analysis, design of test facilities and management of the budget in national projects, including NITE*1, CREST*2 and HiCOT*3 Project where he  contributed to make clear the key characteristics of High Temperature Air Combustion (HiTAC) and diagnostic methods through the NITE project.

He wad Project Manager of ‘International Joint Research on Utilization for low grade fuel with use of High Exergy Ratio Gases’ funded by NEDO, working in cooperation with KTH in Sweden. Further he is Project Manager of ‘Investigation on Energy Saving for Wood Biomass Combustion with use of High Temperature Air Combustion’ funded by NEDO.

The IFRF would like to take this opportunity to thank Tetsuo Akiyama for his excellent contribution to the IFRF and to wish his successor Susumu Mochida all success in the coming years.