Robert B. Semple No longer overconservative dotte shows emphasis on urethane materials, organics, chlor-alkali, cement, and specialties. Mr. Semple says his company and Union Carbide are the largest producers of polyols (raw materials for urethanes), with "each believed to have in excess of 20% of the market." In a second urethane material, toluene diisocyanate ( T D I ) , Wyandotte will have about 9% of industry capacity when its plant at Geismar, La., just starting up, reaches full production, according to Mr. Semple. In ethylene glycol, Wyandotte produces about 6% of the industry's 200 million gallons a year. Company capacity for soda ash is about 10% of nearly 8 million tons industrywide this year, according to William H. Glick, general manager of Wyandotte's inorganic chemicals division. Mr. Glick admits that Wyandotte is examining the natural soda ash development in Wyoming. Mr. Glick pegs Wyandotte's combined chlorine and caustic sales at about $35 million. Company capacity is about 6% of the industry total.
last week in Washington, D.C., at the 18th coatings conference of the Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry. Office copying currently is done by five major processes which depend on converting a sensitized paper coating into a permanent, visible image. They are direct electrostatics, diazo, thermography, diffusion transfer, and dye transfer. Xerography, or transfer electrostatics, does not use sensitized paper. But it is a major factor in the field and accounted in 1966 for more than 50% of the total annual revenue from copying materials and equipment. In the past six years, technological change has affected market size and structure (see graphs). Mr. Diamond points out that some of the carefully drawn lines which originally distinguished one segment of the office copying field from another have dissolved. Changes in reproduction equipment and pricing policies are obliterating these boundaries. There has been enormous growth in direct and transfer electrostatics. Diffusion and dye transfer processes are following a decline that began in 1963 and 1964, while thermographic sales appear to have reached a plateau at $100 million. The strong position held by thermography in the low-volume field is still outside the reach of electrostatics, mainly because of equipment costs. Mr. Diamond says that it is generally held that "this part of the picture will change in the next few years when direct electrostatic copies are made simpler and less expensive. At that time, the higher quality electrostatic method should begin to displace thermography. Barring a major innovation, it is doubtful that the necessary reduction can be made in the cost of xerographic equipment to per-
Transfer electrostatics (xerography) pulls away from five other copying methods Note: Both graphs show sales of equipment and supplies. 400 350
Modern copying to generate $1 billion market by 1970 The equipment and supplies market generated in the U.S. by modern copying methods will reach an annual sales volume of more than $1 billion in 1970, according to Arthur S. Diamond of Telautograph Corp., Los Angeles. The 1970 figure does not include an overseas market that already has swelled to more than $300 million per year, Mr. Diamond said 22 C&EN MAY 15, 1967
mit competitive entry into the low-volume market." Larger companies are beginning to recognize the cost of document copying as a major business expense. Paralleling this growing awareness among consumers is the trend in the technical and trade associations to establish standards and specifications for product quality. One project now in progress attempts to define print permanence in terms of customer needs. There might be, for example, a threelevel classification for the durability of office copying papers: a "throwaway" level for short-term reference material; an intermediate level for papers that would be required on file for up to 25 years; a third level of documents having a relatively long storage life beyond 25 years. Besides these attempts at standards and paper specifications, there are other trends in the office copying field. The increase in direct electrostatic sales between 1963 and 1966, about 425%, is comparable to the growth of transfer electrostatics in 1960-63, when sales rose about 480%. Transfer electrostatics last year attained a volume (at $400 million) that is 2.5 times that of direct electrostatics (at $160 million). But the percentage growth of the xerographic process in 1966 was lower (30%) than the 4 5 % growth for Electrofax copying. Diazo and thermographic methods continue to show strength. Diazo has a good chance of moving steadily into office applications, particularly as larger companies react to the cost of copying by other, more expensive methods, Mr. Diamond says. Opportunities for development of such a trend are reflected in the availability of higher speed diazos, refinement of the more efficient metal halide lamp, improved thermal diazo processes,
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and broader acceptance of "general purpose bond" for controlled originals. Thermography appears to be firming up its position in the market. It has absorbed a number of applications previously served by "wet methods" such as diffusion and dye transfer. Development of thermal transfer techniques will assure greater acceptance in terms of print quality and permanence, and will pave the way for competition with electrostatic, photolithographic, spirit, and stencil processes in the short-run duplicating field, Mr. Diamond says.
British set up firm to push spray steelmaking process Hoping for a repeat of basic oxygen steelmaking's success story, the British Iron and Steel Research Association has set up a company to promote and license the spray steel process, its own alternative to the open-hearth furnace. Based in London, Spray Steelmaking, Ltd., will grant nonexclusive user licenses for BISRA's spray process and will make manufacturing arrangements with equipment makers. Two engineering firms, acting as the company's associates, will provide economic studies, engineering, and construction. Humphreys & Glasgow will serve clients in much of the world, and negotiations are under way with an undisclosed U.S. firm to handle North American customers. Open-hearth furnaces still account for some 275 million tons per year of steelmaking capacity worldwide, BISRA points out. Its new subsidiary has selected around 11 million tons of this potential market as its immediate target for conversion to the spray process. Cost advantages, if proven out in full-scale commercial operation, could make the spray unit a strong contender against the BOF route to steel. "We know that capital costs are lower," sums up Spray Steelmaking's managing director, T. G. Hicks, "and we think operating costs will be lower, too." Two units in Britain have begun checking out these selling points, and two more are on the way. As molten iron from the blast furnace pours into the spray unit's reaction chamber, a ring of oxygen jets atomizes the falling stream of metal and oxidizes unwanted elements. Meanwhile a second ring of nozzles adds lime and fluxes to the spray, forming a slag of oxidized impurities. The spray of iron droplets presents a large surface area to the oxygen sparge, so that the steelmaking reactions are completed while the stream is still falling through the reaction chamber. The products drop into a receiv-
ing ladle, from the top of which slag is continuously drawn off. Capital cost savings stem partly from a spray unit's size. Installation in an existing open-hearth shop requires few alterations, and the unit can be served by existing cranes. The configuration of a BOF requires major alterations, such as raising the shop roof if existing facilities are to be reused. Also, since the high-temperature steelmaking reactions take place in the falling iron stream, away from the reaction chamber walls, refractories are expected to wear well. Since the process itself is continuous, control variables are flow rates rather than total quantities. This makes the spray process better fitted to dynamic control and computer operation than is the BOF approach, BISRA maintains. Oxygen consumption is about the same as for a BOF at the same output, and scrap usage is high—up to 40% of the charge can be added as scrap to the receiving ladle before or during operation. (All of the carbon monoxide generated is burned to carbon dioxide within the spray chamber, producing the heat to melt large scrap loads.) The BISRA development team thinks single spray units for 350 to 450 ton-per-hour steelmaking rates are feasible, though the optimal size hasn't been established. Twin units, operated sequentially, will likely permit a smoother operating schedule than would an equivalent single unit. Following operation of a pilot plant in BISRA's laboratories, the group built a 40 ton-per-hour prototype unit together with Millom Hematite Ore & Iron Co. at the latter's plant. About one third of the charge is scrap, so that iron throughput is 27 tons per hour. Production began a year ago and, with some shutdowns for planned modifications, is continuing. Millom, previously a merchant pig iron producer only, has begun site clearance in its blast furnace shop for twin 56 tonper-hour spray units, to be fed directly from the blast furnace's tapholes. The installation, which also includes continuous casting strands, will turn out 3360 tons a week of billets at a total capital cost less than $2.8 million. Lancashire Steel Corp., which started up a 56 ton-per-hour single spray unit in February, is satisfied with its performance, but hasn't yet reached commercial operation. Installed in an existing mill, its unit cost less than $280,000. Shelton Iron & Steel is installing an experimental unit above an existing Stora-Kaldo basic oxygen furnace, which will act as receiving ladle for partly refined iron when trials begin late next month. In North America only one spray process license has yet been granted—
Millom blast furnace, spray unit Twin 56 ton-per-hour units on the way
to Dominion Foundries & Steel, in Canada, an overseas member of BISRA. A Dominion Foundries official said last week in Hamilton, Ont., that the company is doing further research on the process, but has not decided on its next move.
Activators needed for sodium perborate bleach in detergents Commercially available activators for sodium perborate—which is getting increasing attention as a bleaching agent in home laundry formulations— so far have proved to be of limited value, Dr. Allan H. Gilbert of Lever Bros, said at the American Oil Chemists' Society meeting last week in New Orleans. The purpose of the activators is to overcome sodium perborate's major drawback—low bleaching efficiency at water temperatures of 120° to 140° F., typical of those found in automatic washers in U.S. homes. At water temperatures above 180° F., Dr. Gilbert says, sodium perborate generally will bleach as efficiently as conventional hypochlorite and organic chlorine bleaches and will damage cloth less than those bleaches, especially if they are misused. Modern home washing machines sold in Europe have water heaters which are designed to heat water nearly to boiling. Thus detergents sold in Europe can contain 10 to 2 5 % sodium perborate. A trend toward use of MAY 15, 1967 C&EN
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