FUEL OIL:
Fire Without Brimstone Bahamas Oil Refining Co. will build the world's largest plant for manufacturing low-sulfur fuel oil at Freeport, Crand Bahama Island. The $60 million project will be 65% owned by New England Petroleum Corp. and 35% by Standard Oil Co. of California. Its goal is to meet the rapidly growing demand for low-sulfur, low-pollutant fuel oils in heavily populated areas of the U.S. East Coast. In addition to 1% maximum sulfur fuel oil, the Bahama refinery will manufacture petrochemical feedstocks, jet fuels, and heating oils. The petrochemical feedstocks (primarily naphtha) will be sold to customers in Puerto Rico, according to Edward M. Carey, president of New England Petroleum. Low-sulfur fuel oil represents the fastest growing sector of the petroleum industry. The current market for lowsulfur fuel oil on the East Coast is about 1 million barrels a day and can be expected to grow as antipollution legislation forces the retirement of many coal burning facilities, Mr. Carey says. Also, the swing to such fuels by consumers is often well in advance of the legal deadline imposed by antipollution legislation enacted by metropolitan centers and is causing petroleum companies to scramble to build blending facilities and desulfurizing units fast enough to meet the demand. Hess Oil tripled production of maximum 0.1% sulfur content domestic heating oil at its St. Croix, Virgin Islands, refinery. Humble Oil & Refining Co. added 700,000 barrel-per-day blending facilities at Bayonne last year to produce a 1% sulfur content fuel oil. In May, Humble stated that it would build an H-oil unit at its Bayway, N.J., refinery. Heavy fuel oil from the unit is reduced in sulfur content. Occidental Petroleum proposes to construct a 300,000 barrel-per-day refinery in a foreign trade zone at Machias, Me. Three separate federal government approvals must be obtained before the project can get under way, the most critical of which is Department of the Interior approval for Occidental to import 300,000 barrels daily to the zone and for a 100,000 barrel-per-day oil import quota. The firm could then ship 90,000 barrels per day of low-sulfur fuel oil. Metropolitan New York regulations give a good idea of the kinds of pollution controls being enacted on the East Coast. New York City's Local Law 14 requires stepwise reduction in the maximum allowable sulfur content of fuels to 1% by 1971. Consolidated Edison, the local electric utility, is the firm most affected by this regulation.
Mushroom over Fangataufa Twice the power expected
H-BOMB:
A New Club Member Sixteen years after the United States, 15 years after the Soviet Union, 11 years after Great Britain, and one year after Communist China, France has become a member of the hydrogen bomb "club." Its date of entry: Saturday, Aug. 24, 1968. The blast occurred above the lagoon of Fangataufa, a tiny atoll in French Polynesia, 750 miles from Tahiti. The device, as large as an automobile, according to Robert Galley, French Minister for Scientific Research, Space and Atomic Affairs, was detonated from a 4500-cu.-ft. balloon one third of a mile above the lagoon. He reports that the explosive force of the detonation was equal to 2 megatons of TNT. The first explosion of a French atomic device took place in February 1960. In the past eight years, France has conducted 14 experimental atmospheric tests (the last two occurred in July) while working up to the hydrogen bomb. The French H-device used enriched uranium as the fuse, and was boosted by two compounds which provided the light atoms necessary for the fusion process: lithium-6-deuterium, and lithium-6-tritium. The French fusion process consisted of assembling light atoms, deuterium, tritium, and lithium-6 in the French recipe, to obtain heavier ones, helium-4, while releasing with this fusion a huge amount of energy. The available energy is due to differences in bond strengths. Light atoms need higher bond energies than larger ones obtained by fusion. The boosting technique was perfected by French scientists after four
years of tests. The enriched uranium is produced by the Pierrelatte isotopic separation plant. Deuterium is obtained through heavy water, tritium from lithium-6, using a U.S. process. Lithium-6 itself is produced in the isotopic separation plant of Miramas in southern France. Three types of devices with different geometries were prepared by French scientists. Each device was planned to be tested this summer. But, a French official spokesman tells C&EN, with the success of the first H-test (twice the power expected), the two other tests might be withdrawn, especially in view of the economic situation within France. As a matter of fact, in the different French budgets for 1969, the military one will probably suffer the largest restrictions. Consequently, the socalled "Force de Frappe" will be largely affected. The device tested by France is too large and too heavy to be considered a tactical weapon, the spokesman adds. Many French H-tests are thus expected during the next years before the nation can develop a weapon small enough to be carried by a missile or even an airplane. ASCORBIC ACID:
Huge $40 Million Plant Hoffmann-La Roche has shaken up the ascorbic acid market with its plans to build a huge new unit capable of producing, at one location, almost twice the current U.S. output of this vitamin. Claimed by the company to be the largest vitamin C plant in the world, the new unit is designed to produce 17 million pounds per year. It will cost $40 million. To be located at Roche's new expansion site at Belvidere, N.J., it is scheduled for full operation by late 1970, according to company president V. D. Mattia. The company says the new unit will
Roche's Mattia Largest in vitamin C SEPT. 2, 1968 C&EN
11
THE CHEMICAL WORLD THIS WEEK
permit greatly decreased production costs. Possible cuts in price should open up new uses in agriculture and industry to add to the current outlets in pharmaceuticals and foods. Ascorbic acid has been under price pressure lately from increasing imports. In March of this year, domestic price was dropped from $4.10 per kilo to $3.60 per kilo. And just last week, Roche dropped it again, to $3.25 per kilo. Imports of the vitamin have risen from 427,000 pounds in 1965 to 1.32 million pounds last year and 753,000 pounds for the first five months of this year. Most of it still comes from Japan, but Denmark and West Germany are making increasing contributions. Exports from the U.S. have also grown in these years, from 1.59 million pounds in 1965 to 1.98 million pounds last year. Domestic production—shared by Roche, Merck, and Pfizer—has also been on the increase. In 1965 it was about 8 million pounds, according to Tariff Commission figures. Last year U.S production was very close to 9 million pounds. Roche's planned new facility does much more than allow for the expected growth in vitamin C's established markets in pharmaceuticals and foods. These outlets combined are expected to grow at something like 5% to 10% per year for the next few years. This, with some continued growth in exports, would put total U.S. demand in 1970 at about 12 million pounds—and maybe 25% of this will be met by imports. Hence Roche's 17 million poundper-year facility, which will be fully automated and computer controlled, makes economic sense only if the price cuts expected to result from its size and efficiency really open up the big new markets the company is hinting at—or if the new plant makes the company highly competitive on a worldwide basis. The potential new markets that the company sees for ascorbic acid have been known for some time in the trade. In the agricultural area they include greater use of the vitamin in hen's diets where it increases eggshell strength and so decreases breakage. Citrus is another possible farm market. Spraying orange and olive trees with ascorbic acid solutions lowers the force needed to pick the fruit and so could make feasible the use of mechanical harvesters. In the industrial area, Roche points out that ascorbic acid can be used in plastics, to retard yellowing. Also it is an initiator in the polymerization of polyvinyl, acrylic, and polystyrene plastics. 12 C&EN SEPT. 2, 1968
A view from Morningside Heights Can one resignation preserve the calm?
COLUMBIA:
Carry On, Chemists With registration just two weeks away, Broadway and 116th St. in New York City may soon vibrate again to the demands of Columbia University students. Individual faculty members continue to doubt the "more normal university operations" which president Kirk hoped to enhance by his letter of resignation last month. But no matter what may be in store for Morningside Heights, chances are that chemistry and chemical engineering will be largely unimpaired—that is, if events follow the precedent of last spring, which must rate as a strong example. As had seemed predictable by early May (C&EN, May 13, page 51), most of the chemistry department's operation finished the school year without a break and will show little effect of the spring sit-ins and student strike when classes resume this fall. According to chemistry department chairman Benjamin P. Dailey, all graduate and most undergraduate courses were completed in June, although some students received credit without letter grades. Individual students can convert gradeless credit to marks this year, but no repeat courses are planned. The detachment of chemistry from the riots four months ago is clear from Dr. Dailey's estimate that less than 10% of chemistry students and faculty were actively involved. The science faculty took no official position on the student protests.
Nor did the disturbances apparently affect the chemistry department's relations with Washington. Although informal inquiries came from sources in the capital concerned with government-related research, no action has ensued. The effect on draft status has not yet appeared because of late action by draft boards on students' deferment requests. In chemical engineering, department chairman Elmer L. Gaden, Jr., presents, if anything, an even smaller damage report. But he adds emphatically that lack of disruption is not the same as noninvolvement. Although the department put a solid finish to the last school year by extending the semester and because it plans no curriculum changes whatever this fall, students and faculty have found time for strong action on the campus turmoil. Engineering students worked hard to moderate the protests. The engineering faculty took the first formal action on campus by recommending measures (which were adopted) to end the emergency and proposing long-range measures addressed to the overall problem. The department head laments that these and other recommendations by a campuswide faculty committee have not been acted on to date. "The extremists will try to raise hell again," Dr. Gaden predicts, but he believes most students are disenchanted with the radical approach. Their aim, he says: not campus power but a decent hearing, which they have not gotten thus far.
