My research is primarily focused on resource recovery and materials process engineering. Current interests are the development of new production technology for metals, such as titanium (Ti), platinum group metals (PGMs), gallium (Ga), and rare earth metals (REMs):
a) Development of an efficient recovery process for value added inorganic materials (PGMs, REMs)
b) Research on new production process of Ti
c) Production of rare metal powder (Nb, Ta, etc.) for electronic materials
d) Thermodynamics of nitrides, oxides, chlorides, and their complexes at elevated temperatures

T.H. Okabe, M. Nakamura, T. Oishi, and K. Ono: ‘Electrochemical Deoxidation of Titanium’, Metall. Trans. B, 24B (1993) 449-455. T.H. Okabe and D.R. Sadoway: ‘Metallothermic Reduction as an Electronically Mediated Reaction’, J. Mater. Res., 13 (1998) 3372-3377.
C. Horike, K. Morita, and T. H. Okabe: ‘Effective Dissolution of Platinum by Using Chloride Salts in Recovery Process’, Metall. Mater. Trans. B, vol.43B, no.6 (2012), pp.1300-1307.
Jungshin Kang and T.H. Okabe: ‘Production of Titanium Dioxide Directly from Titanium Ore Through Selective Chlorination Using Titanium Tetrachloride’, Mater. Trans., 55 (2014) 591-598.
H. Okabe, Y. Hamanaka, and Y. Taninouchi: ‘Direct Oxygen Removal Technique for Recycling Titanium Using Molten MgCl2 Salt’, Faraday Discussions, 190 (2016) pp. 109-126.
T. H. Okabe, Chenyi Zheng, and Yu-ki Taninouchi: ‘Thermodynamic Considerations of Direct Oxygen Removal from Titanium by Utilizing the Deoxidation Capability of Rare-Earth Metals’, Metall. Mater. Trans. B, vol. 49, no. 3, (2018) pp.1056–1066.
Yu-ki Taninouchi and T. H. Okabe: ‘Effective Alloying Treatment for Platinum Using Iron Chloride Vapor’, Materials Trans. (JIM), vol. 59, no.1, (2018) pp.88-97.