CLEVELAND as aa Diversified Dive as Industrial Industrial Center E. S. H A N S O N , Standard Oil Co. of Ohio, Cleveland, Ohio CLEVELAND is known for its great ^ diversity of manufacturing operations and in normal times its plants produce items embracing 220 of the 350 industrial classifications established by the Department of Commerce—truly a representative cross section of American industry. This diversity reaches into the field of chemical manufacturing, and a relatively complete textbook on industrial chemistry could be written on the basis of manufacturing operations in the Cleveland area which extends from Painesville on the east to Elyria on the west. Chemical manufacturing in its strict sense includes such items as heavy chemicals, fine and special chemicals in endless variety, compressed gases, fertilizer, and coke-oven by-products. In the field of applied chemistry appear such items as rayon manufacturing, petroleum refining, paint and varnish manufacturing, distilling and brewing, manufacture of porcelain enamel, dry and storage batteries, and pharmaceutical products. E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., an important producer of heavy chemicals and chemicals used in a wide variety of industries (it acquired the well-known Grasselli Chemical in 1928) is active in research. Recent developments include commercial production of sulfamic acid and thiodiphenylamine, popularly termed "phenothiazine". The former can be shipped in carload lots as dry crystals, and its water solutions have acidities similar to those of the strong mineral acids. Its salts are efficient flameproofing agents, weed-killers, and electrodeposition media. The second is used to treat domestic animals for external and internal parasites. Other important producers of heavy chemicals are General Chemical Co., a principal producer of aluminum sulfate and eulfuric acid; American Agricultural Chemical Co., whose products include sulfuric acid as well as fertilizers. Dia90
mond Alkali Co., whose Painesville, Ohio, plant is a large producer of caustic soda, soda ash, liquid chlorine, and allied products, is also an important producer of magnesium metal through its operation of a subsidiary company, The Diamond Magnesium Corp. The Ohio Chemical and Manufacturing Co· is known to many chemists as a supplier of compressed gases, whereas in the medicinal field it is nationally known as a manufacturer of anesthetic gases and equipment for their administration. It is probably not so well known that this firm helped develop, and is now supplying, aviation oxygen equipment to the armed services, without which high-altitude flying would be impossible. This line includes aviation masks, emergency oxygen units, and oxygen supply systems. Emergency oxygen units are used when walking from one location to another in planes, or when "bailing out". HeliumCHEMICAL
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oxygen mixtures as artificial atmospheres for deep-sea divers and for treatment of respiratory diseases are other products. This company also pioneered in the use of cyclopropane as an anesthetic. Linde Air Products Co. and Air Reduction Co. are producers of oxygen and nitrogen. Oxygen is the principal product and is used widely id metal-cutting and welding operations, but an interesting side line is liquid nitrogen, which finds use in the analytical laboratory in low-temperature fractional distillation. The Harshaw Chemical Co., with headquarters in Cleveland and plants in Cleveland and Elyria, among others, produces a diversified line of chemicals, including catalytic reaction agents; colors, frits, and oxides for the ceramic and glass industries; *anodes and chemical salts for electroplating; insecticides and fungicides; pigments, driers, and metallic soaps for the paint and varnish industry
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of offset lithographic presses and gravure ty rayon. Industrial Rayon Corp., with and hydrofluoric acid and fluorides. presses, in the Harris Seybold Potter Co. plants located at Cleveland and PainesSynthetic optical crystals, larger and purer One division of this company was estabville, Ohio, and Covington, Va., is one of the than any formerly obtainable, are also lished before the Civil War and other larger producers of such rayon. Highproduced on a commercial scale. These divisions followed later in the 1880's and tenacity rayon tire cord exhibits great are a definite contribution to the science *90's. This company is now the world's superiority in resisting the deteriorating of spectroscopy and other optical fields. foremost manufacturer of lithographic effects of heat. This property, which is of The McGean Chemical Co. produces printing machinery and the Seybold importance when tires are made of natural a widely diversified line of chemicals, Division leads the Western Hemisphere rubber, becomes vital when tires are made including those for the electroplating, in the production of paper-cutting machinof synthetic rubber. To meet the Army's ceramic, and paint industries. An interery of all kin de and stapling machinery, needs for rayon cord and fabric for tires esting recent development is the producboth of which are widely used in our war on trucks, fighting equipment, and airtion of finished products for flameproofing effort. Most of the military maps in use craft, the Cleveland and Painesville and mildewproofing fabrics. by the Armed Forces are printed on Harris plants are currently undergoing expanThe Ferro Enamel Corp., with headlithographic presses. Mobile printing sion programs which will more than quarters and main plant in Cleveland, is units using small Harris lithographic double their capacities. As an earlier the world's largest producer of porcelain presses are attached to combat divisions step in this program, the Cleveland plant enamel frits. Its operations include plants everywhere our troops are located abroad. was converted during the past year from in England, Canada, Australia, Brazil, These make it possible to print military the manufacture of textile rayon yarns and Argentina, as well as in Holland and maps at the front, as conditions change. to tire rayon. These two plants employ France. The company also produces The Harris Division in Cleveland maina revolutionary continuous process deat the only plant of this kind in the tains a research department for the purveloped by chemists and engineers of this country nickel and cobalt from arsenide pose of developing new materials and company. This process spins, washes, ores brought in from Burma before it was methods for the graphic arts industry. stretches, treats, dries, and twists yarn overrun by the Japs. in a continuous sequence of operations on Of outstanding fame in the electrical The petroleum industry became a a single machine designed and built by world is Nela Park, home of General chemical industry in the strict sense with Rayon Machinery Corp., a wholly owned Electric's Lamp Department at Clevethe first commercial cracking operation. subsidiary. land. When this institution is not reThe Standard Oil Co. of Ohio operates a ferred to as Nela Park, it is just as aptly In the field of lithography, Cleveland large modern refinery on the site of the spoken of as "a university of light" or has one of the outstanding manufacturers original refinery of John D. Rockefeller. This, the No. 1 Refinery, processes crude t . > •- \ oil to gasoline, solvents, fuel oils, coke and \\ \ asphalt. The lubricating oil stocks are transferred by pipe line about 2 miles to Refinery No. 2, where they are further processed to give finished lubricating oils \ i 7' and other products numbering in the hundreds. A large Houdry catalytic \ i cracking installation is being built at a cost of $8,500,000 and is expected to start operations about the middle of 1944. This is expected to be an important contributor to the aviation gasoline needs of the Allies. Cleveland is truly the center of the American paint and varnish industry. ' ~ i ~ "• The number of producing establishments extends into several dozen, including one of the largest in the country, that of The Glidden Co. Besides a number of large' and progressive local firms such as Arco Manufacturing Co., Patterson-Sargent Co., Ferbert-Schorndorfer Co., and many others, two concerns of national scope, Sherwin Williams Co. and The Glidden Co., have their headquarters in Cleveland. Cleveland is widely known as a steel manufacturing center, with plants of Republic Steel Corp., American Steel & Wire Co., and the Otis Works of Jones and Laughlin Steel Corp. located here. Steel manufacturing as such is outside the scope of this article, but the production of cokeoven by-products is definitely chemical manufacturing and is carried on by all three of these firms. The volume of these Cleveland-produced items is sufficient t o ' be a substantial contribution to the war effortOne phase of the chemical industry perhaps not sufficiently recognized in OU PONT CO. discussions of America's rubber program Contact sulfuric acid operation known es *fel*ftf the gravity' . Sulfuric acid is is the manufacture of special high-tenac>ont*s Grasselli plant one of numerous chemicals manufactured in Cleveland et Du P
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Fire-retardant properties of wood impregnated with chromated zinc chloride are determined in this specially developed fire chamber devised by Underwriters* Laboratories, Chicago. Du Pont*s Grasselli plant manufactures chromated zinc chloride.
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Fourteen-foot sections for a tar separator and a 10-ft. funnel at left, to be used at the new refin ery, permitting removal of gas oil vapors as they pass from furnace to catalytic cracking and treat ing cases. The unit will be 38 ft.
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