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Hoechst selling most of its polyesters business After months of speculation. Hoechst has confirmed that its worldwide Trcvira polyester unit is to be sold to a new company formed by a consortium of two privately held companies: Koch Industries of Wichita. Kan., and Crupo Xtra. owned by the Isaac Saba family of Mexico City. Affirming its focus on life sciences businesses. Hoechst has signed a letter of intent to sell the majority of its polyester fibers and resins assets to the as-vetunnamed new company. A Koch spokesman says all parties hope to conclude discussions and settle on terms of the sale, including the price, in the next 60 days or so. The consortium plans to buy 11 production sites, including Hoechst's U.S.. European, and Mexican polyester interests, as well as the Hoechst share in polyester joint ventures in China and Turkey. These assets have annual polymer capacity of 4.4 billion lb. sales of about 52.~ billion, and a workforce of about 11.000 people. The consortium will hold separate discussions regarding the purchase of a Canadian polyester business from Celanese Canada, in which Hoechst owns a 56".> stake. Hoechst will retain its South African and Brazilian polyester businesses. "We see this as an excellent opportunity to extend our participation in the growing polyester value chain." says Cy Nobles, president of Koch Chemical. Adds Saba: "Our experience in the polyester business, combined with Koch's demonstrated operating expertise, will form a truly global enterprise." Koch produces the polyester raw material /;-xylene. but this new venture marks Koch's entry into the polyester fiber and resin business. Ranked by sales, the company says it is the second largest privately held I'.S. company, with 199" sales in excess of S30 billion. (The first is agribusiness giant Cargill.) It employs more than 16.000 people worldwide in a variety of businesses, including oil and gas recover) and refining, petrochemicals, sulfur, asphalt, and real estate. Saba's Groupo Xtra is a significant factor in textile yarns and fabrics, agriculture, food processing, real estate, and tourism industries. The company does not reveal annual sales. With a holding of 8
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1998 C&KN
32% of Gmpo Celanese, the Saba family is the largest Mexican shareholder in Hoechst's Mexico-based bottle resins, fibers, and chemical operations. It is not clear whether William B. Harris. Trevira president and chief executive officer, will remain at the head of the new company. Harris says he is "delighted with the potential new owners because they are committed to the polyester business." He adds: "Our customers and employees should be very pleased that our business will have financially sound owners." Hie new company will retain regional headquarters, established by Hoechst, in Charlotte. X.C.: in Toluca. Mexico: and in Frankfurt. Germany. Patricia Layman and Marc Reiscb
when methane reacts with water. Further reactions convert synthesis gas to higher molecular weight products such as methanol. But making synthesis gas is energy intensive, typically occurring at 850 °C. And researchers have been searching for other, less energy-intensive conversion methods for decades. In their search for alternative processes. Catahtica researchers have focused on carbon-hydrogen bond activation to selectively oxidize alkane C-H bonds. In 1993, they reported a mcrcury(II) catalyst that converts methane to methyl bisulfate at 180 C with 43% yield (C&EN, Jan. 18, 1993. page 6). Now, they have an even Catalytica Advanced Technologies Inc.. Mountain View. Calif, has developed a better system based on platinum. Developed by Catalytica director of catalyst that could convert natural gas. now underused in some countries, into research Roy A. Periana. research fellows more valuable materials, such as a petro- Douglas J. Taube and Scott Gamble, scientific adviser and Stanford University chemical feedstock. Natural gas is abundant in many coun- professor Henry Taube, and visiting scitries but not used widely as a feedstock entists Takashi Satoh and Hiroshi Fujii, the because transporting it is very expensive. catalyst is a dichloroplatinum(II) complex As a by-product of oil production, gas is with a bipyramidyl ligand. At 200 °C and often pumped back into the ground or in concentrated sulfuric acid, it converts burned, contributing to global wanning. methane to methyl bisulfate with up to 'Hie resource would be worth more if the ~2% yield [Science. 280, 560 (1998)]. Hymethane in it could be converted to a drolysis of methyl bisulfate forms methamore transportable product, such as a liq- nol, which can be distilled. flic Catahtica researchers iiave made uid or an easily liquéfiable gas. One current approach for converting a remarkable advance" in methane actimethane to transportable products is vation, says Jack H. Lunsford, a chemisbased on synthesis gas. a mixture of try professor at Texas A&M University, carbon monoxide and hydrogen formed (College Station, with a continuing interest in methane-to-methanol conversion. The yields "far exceed those of any other system of which I am aware," and the stability of the system also is impressive," given that the solvent is concentrated sulfuric acid, he adds. Robert C. Bergman, a chemistry professor at the University of California, Berkeley, whose research interests include alkane C-H bond Researchers (from left) Douglas Taube, Periana, Gamble, activation, says the Cataand Henry Tau be developed an alternative process for htica researchers have activating methane.
Adding more value to natural gas
made "an important step forward" compared with their earlier mercury system. He notes that the platinum catalyst not only works better but also avoids use of mercury, which is very toxic, in the catalytic process. In O H bond activation, none of the free radicals typically generated in hightemperature reactions are formed. Instead, a metal takes only one C-H bond, breaks it, and then binds the resulting methyl fragment. Because the fragment is "never free to do what it wants," only one O H bond is oxidized, explains Periana. Yields are low. however, if the product continues to react with the metal. That is not a problem in the Catalytica system because methyl bisulfate reacts much more slowly with the catalyst than does methane. Given the catalyst system's performance, Periana believes the chemistry is more than just feasible for commercial development. "It's doable," he tells C&EN. Of course, other issues need to be addressed, he stresses. "We're not interested in just operating this chemistry. We're interested in operating it competitively with significantly improved economics and environmental advantages. " Maureen Rouhi
Research universities: Undergrad reform urged A commission assembled by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Menlo Park, Calif., is calling for a sweeping reform in the way the country's 125 research universities educate their undergraduate students. Highly critical in tone, its newly released report says these universities should be seen as an "ecosystem" of intellectual inquiry that undergraduates should share in but most often don't. It makes 10 recommendations for change. The commission thought its report would be controversial. It was right. Media accounts elicited an outraged response from presidents of many of the country's top universities gathered in Washington, D.C., last week for the spring meeting of the Association of American Universities. AAU's president, Cornelius J. Pings, was especially upset and sent a letter to the Sew York Times protesting its coverage of the report. The commission was originally established by foundation President Ernest L. Boyer, who died soon after the project
Science societies ask Congress for more funds for NSF Last week, for the first time, leaders of organizations representing a quarter of a million scientists—Paul H. L Walter (center), president of the American Chemical Society; Ralph G. Yount (lefl\ president of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology; and Andrew M. Sessler (right), president of the American Physical Society—presented common testimony before the House Appropriations Committees Subcommittee on VA, HID & Independent Agencies. They united to urge Congress to increase the National Science Foundations budget by 10% to $3.8 billion for fiscal 1999. "The sciences have become almost totally interdependent," testified Walter. "Our progress in treating AIDS and our understanding of its pathology would never have occurred without critical advances in chemistry, biology, and physics, and, yes, mathematics, engineering, and computer science as well. NSF is the only federal agency that has the program breadth needed to see that all the disciplines remain vibrant and healthy." Linda Raber
was launched. Replacing Boyer as chair was Shirley Strum Kenny, an English scholar and now president of the State University of New York, Stony Brook. One of the commission's members is Bruce M. Alberts, biochemist and president of the National Academy of Sciences. The report says: "Students paying tuition get, in all too many cases, less than their money's worth. Universities are guilty of an advertising practice they would condemn in the commercial world. Recruitment materials proudly display7 the world-famous professors, the splendid facilities, and the groundbreaking research that goes on within them. But thousands of students graduate without ever seeing the world-famous professors or tasting genuine research. Graduate student instructors, it goes on, are badly trained or not trained at all. Many have not mastered English. "All too often," it continues, "students graduate without knowing how to think logically, write clearly, or speak coherently." Universities, it claims, have done little more than apply "cosmetic surgery" to the problem. Such criticisms are hardly new, and universities and federal agencies that support them have been addressing the problems. That is the main reason the report upset AAU members. An AAU spokesman says a recent AAU survey recounted example after example of programs that universities began in recent
years to remedy complaints by undergraduates and their parents. Commission member Alberts was not in total agreement with the report's findings, either. He says it "does not adequately reflect the many efforts being made by7 senior scientists to do new types of teaching at the early7 undergraduate level." But he said the report's most important message is that we should rethink the freshman year, aiming to make it completely different from high school." Kenny tells C&EN that the report was not meant to be inflammatory but a "wake-up call." The commission did recognize, she adds, that man}7 universities are dealing with the issues in the report. But for those who aren't, "we are offering a l()-point plan for remedying problems that aren't new," but are persistent. The report lists and elaborates on the 10 steps: make research-based learning the standard, construct an inquiry-based freshman year, build on that freshman foundation, remove barriers to interdisciplinary7 education, link communication skills with course work, use information technology7 creatively7, culminate with a "capstone" experience, educate graduate students as apprentice teachers, change faculty reward systems, and cultivate a sense of community within the universities. The report can be downloaded from the Stony Brook web site at http://www. sunysb.edu. Wil Lepkowski APRIL 27. 1998 C&EN 9
