ICI's 1966 earnings down 15% Imperial Chemical Industries' earnings fell 15% last year on higher group sales. Total pretax earnings for 1966 came to $241 million. Group sales were up 8% at $2.48 billion, with overseas sales for the first time equaling those in ICI's home market in Britain. The board blames slumping fiber prices and higher U.K. wage costs for the company's performance, along with delays in startup or completion of large new plants. A comprehensive study of process equipment demand in the U.K. has just been completed by a working party of the National Economic Development Office. It forecasts that hardware purchases this year and next will be 20 to 30% above those of the two years just past. Though capital spending by the chemical industry is leveling out in Britain, the oil and gas industries are just swinging into major expansions. British vendors' backlogs are already heavy, and NEDO sees a spillover from last year of some $90 million in overdue equipment orders.
Oil shale retorted underground Low-temperature underground retorting of oil shale produces a crude oil with many attractive properties, Dr. George R. Hill of the University of Utah told a meeting of the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers last week in Los Angeles. A field test in Colorado's Piceance Creek Basin made by Dr. Hill and Paul Dougan of Equity Oil Co. yielded a liquid, low-nitrogen crude with an API gravity of 40° and pour points as low as —40° F. In the Equity Oil tests, started two years ago and still going on, natural gas heated to a temperature below 800° F. is injected into a central hole and returned through peripheral holes. When the kerogen in the shale becomes hot enough, it is converted to bitumen which then produces a paraffinlike oil. Typical above-ground retorting of oil shale uses temperatures of 900° to 1100° F. because of the economic need for a high throughput. This produces a markedly different product that is practically a solid at room temperature, with an API gravity of 20° and a pour point of 80° F. From lab results obtained in the university's fuels engineering department and from data of other workers, Dr. Hill theorizes that different mechanisms are at work in the low- and hightemperature processes. Whereas the bitumen produces oil directly below 800° F., at higher temperatures the bitumen and initial oil are made faster 14 C&EN FEB. 27, 1967
than they can escape from the rock matrix. Confined, they produce a polymer which subsequently decomposes to yield the heavy oil typical of experimental retorts. Oil from the Equity method is higher in the gasoline fractions than is the retort oil, Dr. Hill says, and is also much lower in nitrogen (0.8% versus more than 2 % ) . Because of the olefins content, it would have to be hydrotreated before refining. This is no serious problem, though, because most refineries being built in the West include such facilities. It is too early to say anything about the economic feasibility of the process, Dr. Hill feels, because a large-scale field test is needed. If it is practical, he says, full production might involve pouring in heat through many holes. It could take as much as a year for a large section of the formation to reach the desired temperature, but then the product could be taken out of the ground over a long period. The process could have an economic edge because it takes oil from the ground rather than shale. Attempts have been made—so far unsuccessfully—to qualify such oil for the 27.5% oil depletion allowance, rather than the 15% mineral depletion allowance that now applies. Such a ruling could make a difference. Union Oil, for one, contends that its above-ground retorting process would be economic today under the 27.5% allowance.
Microwave curing on the rise This month, consultant W. Brandt Goldsworthy of Los Angeles shipped to an overseas customer a machine that cures glass-fiber-reinforced epoxy pipe by microwaves. In San Ramon, Calif., Cryodry Corp., a division of Armour, is readying a large microwave unit that will go soon to Boise Cascade Corp/s Yakima, Wash., plant. Boise will evaluate the unit for drying plywood veneers. These two somewhat unrelated events point up chemically oriented industry's growing interest in microwaves. Cryodry engineers contend that microwaves will become an important energy source for industrial chemical processes within the next five years. Microwaves are generated by radio frequency power tubes such as the magnetron, amplitron, and klystron. Their frequencies range between 300 MHz. and 300,000 MHz. (One megahertz is 10 6 cycles per second.) Four frequencies-915 MHz., 2450 MHz., 5800 MHz., and 22,125 M H z . - h a v e been set aside by the Federal Communications Commission for industrial uses of microwaves.
When microwaves pass through a material, the molecules attempt to align themselves with the electrical field. Generation of heat is the net effect of the resulting molecular jostling. The principle is applied in the microwave ovens that have been in use now for a number of years for making such products as potato chips and precooked chicken. Smaller versions of the ovens are used in passenger aircraft to heat meals. Besides Cryodry, the Eimac division of Varian Associates, Raytheon Co., and Litton Industries' Atherton division also supply microwave ovens for industrial heating. Reeve Electronics, Chicago, makes a microwave unit for drying vinyl adhesives on paper products. By far the biggest commercial use of microwaves is in drying potato chips. The deep-fried slices pass under a microwave source that reduces their moisture content from about 10 to 2 % . Microwave drying obviates interaction between the potato's reducing sugars and amino acids which leads to browning and hardening of the chips. Until the process was developed, only potatoes low in reducing sugars could be used to make chips, notes John O'Meara, manager of Cryodry's food products division. These are expensive and hard to obtain in some countries, he points out. Engineers are taking a closer look at microwaves to see how they might be harnessed to chemical processes. Reactions involving polar groups, for example, are very susceptible to microwaves. Typical are condensation polymerizations during which water or an alcohol is generated. Besides speeding the course of reactions, microwaves may eliminate the need for polymerization accelerators. In some cases they may even reduce the amount of catalyst normally needed for polymerization. Lowering the catalyst content in the reaction mix would increase its pot life and could
Eimac pipe-curing module 10 feet now, continuous later
