Completely off-topic: need help to search is Japanese

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Hello

This is question that is not related to modelling, but for the work of a friend of mine.
We work on research on Transports and my friend is looking for information about fuel life cycle of gasoline, diesel, hydrogen and electricity in Japan, in regards of energy, CO2, CO, NMHC, NOx, PM, SOx, N2O and Ch4.

Although these reports are not familiar to most of us, they are usually available. She has tried the terms "fuel life cycle" and the respective fuels in google and google translator, but the Japanese characters are not easy for most of us and we may not be looking with the right Japanese words.

So, if someone here that understands Japanese could introduce the terms "fuel life cycle, gasoline, diesel, hydrogen, electricity, Japan" in Japanese, might result in some reports (just post here the links, or PM me please) that we were unable to find with translator.

Thank you for the help and any question, just ask
Kind regards!

[Eagle50]

Hey Fade. I'm having trouble understanding your question. "Fuel life cycle in regards to energy, CO2" etc..?? What does that mean..??? And what's "NMHC"..? And "CH4"..?

If it's any help, the best online English <> Japanese dictionary is:
http://www.alc.co.jp/

And when looking for scientific papers online, it helps to know who writes interesting papers. If, for example, and man named "Suzuki" is an expert on the subject, Googling for "Suzuki" plus "fuel" or "life cycle" might give you some useful hits.

Another way is to use Wikipedia. If there's a useful Wikipedia page in English, or another language you understand, there's often a link to a Japanese page, on the left side of the Wikipedia article. And even if the Japanese Wikipedia page is not 100% related, it will give you some useful key words, to do more searches.

Cheers,
Chris

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Hello Chris

Thanks for the feedback!!
You pose an interesting question.
For the fuel to get to the vehicle it goes to a cycle: for instance extraction, transport by ship, refining and road transport ( for japan, Gasoline as example has a pathway similar to this: extraction of crude from saudi arabia, transport by tanker to Japan, refining in Japan and road transport to gas station). That cycle spends energy (in MJ ) and has an environmental burden caused by several parameters for instance air pollution or water contamination. My friend is studying the impact caused by air pollution regarding global warming and health effects, the air pollutants considered are carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO), non methane hydrocarbons (NMHC), Nitrogen Oxides( NOx), particullate mater (PM), sulphur oxides (SOx), nitrous oxides (N2O) and methane (CH4).
She has already searched many sites, and sent emails to people she thought that may answer, but didn't have any good outcome, that is why I was trying to help her by finding someone that could conduct a search understanding the language (not by translations).

If you could help us searching terms like "fuel life cycle, air pollutants, light duty vehicle, well-to-wheel, well-to-tank" in Japanese, or knowing the gasoline or diesel and electricity retailers, some potential interesting reports could pop-up. We have look for scientific reports, but most of this info is only available at producers/retailers or the country environmental agency.

Any help you could provide is much appreciated
Thank you very much!
Gonçalo

[Eagle50]

Wow! That's way over my head, Gonçalo..! I wouldn't even know how to help you... I've never seen any of those terms before, and they certainly don't come up in everyday conversation here...

You might want to do some searches at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. It seems like they would know what you're talking about.
http://www.mlit.go.jp/en/index.html

And maybe the generic government ministry website can help. There's a "Contact us" page you can click on (at page top). Write them a message (keep it simple, and in plain English), and maybe they can point you in the right direction.
http://www.japan.go.jp/

Good luck!

Cheers,
Chris

[hirofkd]

Japanese use the abbreviation LCA, and ライフサイクルアセスメント, which is the transliteration of "life cycle assessment". Add 温暖化 (warming), and you might get some useable results.
Japanese don't speak English (and don't want to!), and most of the private research is done in Japanese.
But most collage professors can write papers in either English or Japanese.
Try: http://lca-forum.org/english/

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Thank you so much Chris and Hiro!

We have been doing some searches guided by your inputs and we are having some results. Now it is time for translations and gather the data together.
I'll keep bother you if we have doubts/troubles.
Just as a final remark, I guess this is what makes this forum so good! A big thank you for your help and support!

Kind regards
Gonçalo