and Dr. Tamplin. Dr. Gofman says that he has been censored and that the sharp cutback in Dr. Tamplin's work as well as curbs in time off and expenses paid for attending meetings to present their data are clearly retaliatory measures. Moreover, Dr. Gofman says he is yet to get a single refutation of his and Dr. Tamplin's findings. Both men, who are in LRL's biomedical division, insist that they have no intention of resigning but both expect to be fired.
ACADEMIC DEGREES:
Nationwide System U.S. academic degrees should be rationalized into a single, nationwide system based on simplicity, ease of transfer among schools and programs, and validity of each degree as a terminal step along the way. This recommendation is embodied in "Academic Degree Structures—Innovative Approaches," written by Dr. Stephen H. Spurr, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, for the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education. Dr. Spurr suggests: • Six basic academic degrees: associate, bachelor, master, licentiate in philosophy, Ph.D., and doctor of natural philosophy. An L.Phil, fulfills all Ph.D. requirements except research and dissertation; a doctorate of natural philosophy is awarded after two years' postdoctoral work. • Speeding progress to doctorates. The current average age of 32 for Ph.D. winners is too old, he feels. • Reduction of numbers of degrees. Dr. Spurr would cut from 1600 to about 60 the number of degrees. • Mandatory passage of each degree level by everyone along the way. • More transfer options among programs. Too early specialization should not reduce chances to enter graduate school in a field other than that of the undergraduate degree. Some of Dr. Spurr's proposals are already in effect at some schools where their effect on chemical education can be gauged. Yale University, New Haven, Conn., has awarded 37 master of philosophy degrees to chemistry students in the past three years. Asked about careers open to people with a terminal M.Phil., he says, "I would worry about mobility more than anything else. There would be many career activities open to a degree like that, but there would be many closed doors/' The M.Phil, has not been much used as a terminal degree at Yale, however. Only two or three students have sought it for a scientific career outside research, says Dr. Lyons, whereas the others have gone on for a Ph.D. 14 C&EN JULY 13, 1970
Associate degrees are awarded in chemical technology rather than chemistry, and students usually don't come to college to be technicians. Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, Ind., offers an associate degree in chemical technology with pharmaceutical and engineering options, says Dr. Theodore H. Cutshall, a chemistry staff member. Transfer to chemistry is difiBcult, he says, because of differing chemistry courses offered in each program. About 20 students have graduated in this program in the past five years. El Camino College, Torrance, Calif., has a chemical technology program with chemistry courses the same as the chemistry bachelor program, with an instrumental analysis course added, says natural science division dean Sam Schauerman. Students don't think of being technicians, he says, and generally use the associate degree to work in case of need for money to finish a bachelor's, says Mr. Schauerman.
NATURAL GAS:
Italy Goes Dutch The Netherlands and Italy have signed a 120 billion cubic meter natural gas agreement. Under terms of the contract, simultaneously released in The Hague and Rome, Italy's state-owned oil company Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi (ENI) will buy natural gas from the Netherlands over a period of 20 years starting in early 1974. Value of the contract has been fixed at 5 billion Dutch guilders (or about $1.4 billion). Dutch natural gas sales are expected to reach an annual maximum of 6 billion cubic meters three years after the beginning of the delivery. Unit cost of the Dutch gas has been fixed at 1.15 cents per cubic meter, the regular price asked by the Netherlands for former and similar agreements. Details of the deal have not been fixed, and in particular the road that the Dutch gas will follow to reach the ENI natural gas pipeline network in Italy has not yet been decided. However, as the gas will be delivered at the Belgium-Netherlands border, the pipeline will probably go through Belgium, Luxembourg, and France, an ENI spokesman tells C&EN. The Netherlands has already signed similar agreements with other European countries during the past five years. Presently West Germany is buying annually 10.5 billion cubic meters of Dutch natural gas. Also, France currently is buying 3.2 billion cubic meters per year of Dutch gas (up to 7.5 cubic meters per year by 1975), and Belgium gets 7 billion cubic meters per year.
THE CHEMICAL WORLD THIS WEEK Italy has recently signed a similar agreement with the U.S.S.R. (C&EN, Dec. 22, 1969, page 9 ) . The ItalianSoviet deal calls for the sale of 100 billion cubic meters of Soviet natural gas to ENI over a period of 20 years, starting by 1974. During the next three years, ENI will build a 250-milelong pipeline through Austria to move the Soviet gas to the Italian border and connect it to the Italian natural gas network. Italy is also producing its own natural gas. ENI is currently producing some 15 billion cubic meters of natural gas in the Po Valley, and expects to exploit very soon the natural gas field that it has recently discovered in the Adriatic Sea. In addition, ENI signed a natural gas agreement with Libya last year which calls for the annual sale of 3 billion cubic meters of Libyan gas over a period of five years. And ENI has been negotiating for many years with the Algerian government for the purchase of natural gas from the Hassi R'Mel fields, in the northeastern Sahara.
POLLUTION:
Burn Coal, Save S02 Until last week, electric power companies could consider two routes to fight sulfur dioxide pollution from their coal-burning plants: use of relatively expensive low-sulfur coal or removal of the corrosive pollutant from stack gases. Boston Edison opted for the latter course earlier this month (C&EN, July 6, page 19). Now comes word of a third approach: a coal combustion process that produces heat but not sulfur dioxide. Black, Sivalls and Bryson, Inc., disclosed that its applied technology division, located in Pittsburgh, Pa., has received an initial contract of $892,000 from the National Air Pollution Control Administration to develop a new type of coal-burning system that BS&B refers to as the "submerged coal combustion process." As described by Dr. Paul J. LaRosa, R&D manager for the applied technology division, coal is injected with air under pressure into a mass of molten iron in a furnace called a "combustor." As the coal dissolves, sulfur is released and immediately combines chemically with iron. In this form sulfur rises to the surface, where slag from added limestone removes sulfur from the iron. Portions of the slag are periodically removed and sent to a slag desulfurizer for recovery of elemental sulfur by conventional techniques.
The submerged coal combustion process should be less expensive than other processes that remove sulfur from coal or from stack gases, according to Dr. Eugene A. Pelczarski, BS&B vice president of engineering. A key factor is sale of by-product iron, slag, and particularly sulfur. If sulfur were sold at $40 a ton, then the combustor system would pay back its cost of operation at an 800-mw. power plant, he estimates. The break-even price for sulfur would be lower if iron accumulated from coal were also sold, as well as slag for use as subpavement fill for roads. Since a combustor at an 800-Mw. plant would burn high-sulfur coal at a rate of about 270 tons per hour, sulfur would be recovered in large amounts, he adds. In addition to complete prevention of sulfur dioxide formation, the combustor system may also form nitrogen oxides in smaller quantities and trap fly ash in the slag layer above the molten iron, Dr. Pelczarski says. Formation of nitrogen oxides may be reduced by lower combustion temperatures-2600° F., instead of 3000° F. as in a conventional coal-burning furnace. Questions such as these will be answered by studies with the NAPCAfinanced demonstration unit, he says. Adoption of the combustor system by utility companies isn't likely before 1975, Dr. Pelczarski says, and will probably take at least a year or two longer. The system must first be tested with units of increasing size.
MERCURY:
Widespread Spillage Earlier this year one chemical company claimed that, though it buys 10 76-pound flasks of mercuiy a month, it wasn't really putting nearly that much in local waterways. Much of its missing quicksilver was pilfered, the company claimed, for its resale value on that obscure underground Bourse— the mercury black market. This explanation apparently did not deter the Federal Water Quality Administration from probing deeper for instances and causes of mercury pollution of U.S. waterways. Since Dow and Wyandotte Chemicals were first found to be polluting Ontario and Michigan waterways with mercury last March, FWQA has been spiritedly broadening its investigation of the nation's waterways and, with virtually every analysis, another site of mercury contamination is found. At press time, Secretary of Interior Hickel was expected to become involved. The latest series of test results, which surfaced last week, revealed large areas in the Northeast and old South to be polluted. In May,
MERGERS:
Some Increases
FWQA's Murray Stein Reducing emissions
Detrex Chemical Industries, Inc., Ashtabula, Ohio (caustic-chlorine plant); Allied Chemical, Buffalo, N.Y. (dye division); and Diamond Shamrock, Painesville, Ohio, joined Dow and Wyandotte on the carpet, and in the latest—and greatest—flurry of FWQA activity, a virtual who's who among chemical companies has been added to the list of mercury polluters. On New Jersey's Arthur Kill River, GAF Corp. has allegedly been releasing up to 28 pounds of mercury a day. The company has promised to reduce its emissions to a quarter pound per day, chief FWQA enforcement officer Murray Stein says. In Calvert City, Ky., both B. F. Goodrich Chemical Co. and Pennwalt Corp. have apparently been releasing mercury from their mercury cell caustic chlorine units into the Tennessee River. Both have taken corrective measures. In the deep South Olin Corp., Stauffer Chemical, and Diamond Shamrock have all been implicated in mercury pollution of rivers or lakes. An FWQA spokesman last week identified five more polluters along the Mississippi River in Louisiana: Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corp., 12.5 pounds of mercuiy daily at Baton Rouge and 33.2 pounds daily at Gramercy; Dow Chemical Co., Plaquemine, 3.22 pounds daily; Wyandotte Chemicals Corp., Geismar, 11.7 pounds; and Monochem, Inc., a subsidiary of Uniroyal, Geismar, 0.55 pound. The five Louisiana plants are cooperating to reduce their mercury discharges into the river to zero. One problem that looms out of FWQA's checks and possibly tighter controls is what effects such controls may have on the economics of caustic-chlorine production.
Despite a depressed stock market, faltering economy, and uncertain business outlook, corporate merger announcements for all industry were off only 14.5% in the second quarter of 1970 compared to second-quarter 1969. The second-quarter survey and preliminary analysis by W. T. Grimm & Co., Chicago-based financial firm specializing in mergers and acquisitions, shows 1147 merger announcements for all industries in second-quarter 1970, compared to 1341 recorded in the second quarter of 1969. For the first half of 1970, announcements declined by 9.3% from first-half 1969, from 2815 to 2552. Bucking the trend for all industry for second-quarter 1970 are drug, petroleum, plastics, and primaiy metal companies, which showed increased merger activity in second-quarter 1970 compared to the same period in 1969. Merger announcements for petroleum companies were up 64%, for example, over 1969. Petroleum, plastics, and primary metal companies also posted increases in merger announcements for the first quarter of 1970. In contrast, chemicals-paints-coatings registered a sharp decrease in the number of merger announcements for second-quarter 1970 from the like period in 1969. There were only 21 merger announcements in second-quarter 1970 compared to 44 in the first quarter of this year and 30 in secondquarter 1969. However, for the half year just ended, announcements of mergers were up 32% over the first half of 1969. Many companies are apparently disposing of marginal or unprofitable divisions that don't fit their planned objectives. Still other companies appear to be selling off divisions because of the urgent need to retire pressing debt obligations. Sales of chemicals-paintscoatings divisions more than doubled over second-quarter 1969, whereas sales of petroleum, drug, and plastic divisions more than tripled.
Total mergers dropped 14% in second-quarter 1970 Categories
Number of announcements 1970 Second quarter
Chemicals, paints, coatings Drugs, cosmetics, medical Petroleum Plastics Primary metal processors ALL INDUSTRY
1969 Second quarter
21
30
31
27
41 25 22
25 18 19
1147
1341
JULY 13, 1970 C&EN
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