Toxic avenger OES Co., Ltd.

Ammonia is used in everything from fertilizers to chemical industry products. The gas is also used as a cleaning agent for the silicon chip and semiconductor manufacturing industry-and with the world's appetite for electronics rising daily, it's being produced in ever-increasing amounts. To not only cope with but also make use of the gas, companies exist that produce machines to convert ammonia into non-toxic chemicals.

One Aichi Prefecture-based business, OES Co., Ltd., specializes in these industrial-grade catalytic converters that can transform ammonia into nitrogen and water. Formed in 2002 by Tsugiya Ohashi, OES was founded as a spin-off from the Otsuka Pharmaceutical Group Company, where Ohashi started his catalyzer research. He had developed a system much more efficient than the ones being used at the time. After presenting his findings and his hopes to further develop the technology to his superiors, they suggested he form his own company to focus exclusively on catalyzer research.

While it's a tiny company, OES has research developments with both Otsuka Pharmaceuticals Group Company and Lund University in Sweden. After becoming independent, they managed to develop catalyzer technology to the point where the overall energy cost regained from a converter's by-products counterbalance 95 percent of the total energy needed to do the conversion. Another big strength of its system is the size, or the lack of it. Most technologies take up a significantly larger amount of space but are no more efficient-and in some cases less so-than OES' solution.

Clients of OES run the gamut from machinery and heavy industry to some of the biggest names in electronics manufacturing in Japan. Internationally, their main focus is on Taiwan because the semiconductor and electronics industries there are some of the largest in the world. The Chinese island is also working hard to improve the environmental impact of those industries.

More efficient and new prototypes are constantly under development.

Research and development

The challenge of engineering is Representative Director, Tsugiya Ohashi's passion. While running the company takes most of his time, he favors working on the puzzling aspects of the research. His biggest project right now is tackling how to make the energy used and the energy produced by his system cancel each other out. Ohashi says he's confident he can achieve this goal by 2014 of April. This would raise the bar for all competing products and give OES a definitive edge in the industry.

By continuing the research and development of some of the most advanced technology used in catalytic converters, OES hopes to save its clients money as well as ensure that ammonia is one less toxin in the environment that consumers need to worry about.