"Monopolies of Technologies Costly," Declares Krug A S T A F F REPORT
£ T WAS fitting that J. A. Krug, Secretary of the Interior of the United States, and a long time conservationist was the last speaker at the closing plenary session of the United Nations Scientific Conference on the Conservation and Utilization of Resources (C&EN Sept. 5 and Sept. 12). Secretary Krug was liberal with his praise of the three-week conference and claimed that it demonstrated that interest in the conservation and development of resources is confined neither geographically nor to specific resources. T h e success of the conference, he said, also showed that it is possible to overcome differences in language and cultural backgrounds to "reach a better understanding on what needs to be clone to assure a decent standard of living for the people of the world." Into the conference's atmosphere of world-wide thinking, Krug introduced the sober observation that each nation or at best each region of the world is and probably will continue to be dependent upon its own resources for basic foods, fuels, and energy. World trade in most instances, he explained, can merely supplement local supplies and economies are always weighted against materials and foods that must be imported. Krug also pointed out that each nation must draw upon world-wide information to get the most out of the Trygve
«690
Lie,
Secretary-General
of the
resources at its disposal. For this reason, he said, "The world can not afford monopolies of technologies." H e brought his address to a conclusion by stating that the conference had shown that there was "an appalling lack of, and a compelling need for, really effective interchange of knowledge regarding resource conservation and development." The speaker believed that although conferences such as this one are helpful there is no simple answer to the major problem. Development and conservation of resources are the application of the "detailed and specific knowledge of thousands of trained people in thousands of fields of enterprise." Secretarj' Krug was preceded on the speaking program at the final session by Mrs. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, chairman of the Indian delegation to the U N and James Thorn, president of the Economic and Social Council of the U N . Mrs. Pandit declared that science today is the concern of everyone because of the impact that politics has made on the life of the individual. Unless the relationship between politics and science is correct, she warned, "there may be no life left which scientific knowledge may enrich." The past history of mankind has shown, she continued, that lasting contributions to civilization have been possible only when men were reasonably United
Nations,
addresses
plenary
session
CHEMICAL
fed and clothed a n d enjoyed generally good health. "Man's mental and material progress were inseparably linked with one another," she concluded. Mr. Thorn, in his address, referred to the first aim i n t h e United Nations charter, that of saving succeeding gen• erations from t h e "scourge of war" as being dependent upon another aim expressed in the charter, that of promoting "social progress and better standards of life in greater freedom." Both goals, he declared, are basically dependent o n conservation and utilization of resources. The technical sessions of the latter days of the conference dwelt heavily on the problems of more efficient chemical utilization of wood, the future of light metals, and the subject of corrosion. W. F. Holzer of Crown Zellerbach Corp. listed some of the steps that have been taken b y the pulp, paper, and board industries to prevent the depletion of wood as a chemical raw material. Through the efforts of these industries, the speaker said, t h e usefulness of wood has been extended b y t h e development of processes for t h e preparation of b y products and t h e recovery of valuable wood chemicals heretofore lost during processing. The conservation efforts in these industries, Holzer continued, have also resulted in the improvement in recovery of the raw material and an increase in the yield from t h e processes in which it is used. One of the examples used b y the speaker to explain his observations was that of sawmill "waste minimization. N e w methods of chipping and barking wood are saving enormous quantities of raw material, Holzer said. Bark is being removed hydraulically with jets of water under pressures of 800 t o 1,500 lb. and large chippers are being developed with disks up t o 175 inches in diameter and capable of taking whole logs up to 40 inches in diameter and 2 0 to 30 feet long. Savings of u p to 20% b y use of this new equipment have been reported, Holzer revealed. Of particular interest to t h e chemical technologist was that part of ^ Holzer's paper that concerned t h e utilization of waste pulping liquors. In 1947, he disclosed, 4 million tons of lignin and 2 million tons of carbohydrates were contained in the w a s t e liquors produced by the sulfite and kraft pulp producers in this country. Practically all of the kraft black liquor was burned for chemical a n d heat recovery but a very large percentage of the sulfite liquor was discarded.
AND
ENGINEERING
NEWS
Unfortunately, Holzer said, the conversion of the hexose sugars in sulfite waste liquor t o alcohol is economic only when the price of the products from the competing fermentation and synthetic processes is high, d«e**o scarcity, or when the manufacture of alcohol is only one of several processes involved in the complete utilization of waste liquor. In recognition of this situation, Holzer said, considerable interest has been concentrated upon the problem of making yeast suitable as a protein food for animal and human consumption from the hexoses and the pentoses in sulfite waste liquor. A pilot plant to utilize the waste liquor from 50 tons of pulp a day has been erected in Rhinelander, Wis., as a cooperative venture by the sulfite pulp mills of that state. T h e calcium lignosulfonate portion of sulfite waste liquor has always presented difficulty to the pulp industry, Holzer said, because its calcium base does not permit it to be burned readily for heat and chemical recovery. Processes have been developed for the manufacture of vanillin, tanning agents, dispersing agents, adhesives, soil stabilizers, and many other materials from the lignin content of sulfite waste liquor but none of these has been able to achieve a sufficient market to justify large-scale production. Some hope for major assistance in the sulfite waste liquor problem, Holzer continued, has appeared in the extension of magnesia- and ammonia-based processes in this country. These methods, originally used in Scandinavia, employ these soluble bases to permit the easy evaporation of the waste liquor, its burning for heat recovery, and in the case of magnesia, the recovery of the chemicals used in the pulping operation. T h e unique feature of the magnesia base liquor, Holzer said, is that magnesium oxide and sulfur dioxide are formed quantitatively upon burning and can be recovered in a cyclic process. It has also been proposed that the ammoniabased liquor could be evaporated and sold for fertilizer because of its nitrogen and humus contents. Erik Hagglund of the Swedish Wood Pulp Research Institute revealed that efforts in his country for the better utilization of sulfite waste liquors have been directed toward its economically profitable evaporation and burning, a practice that has reduced the coal consumption in the sulfite industry by 50%. Corrosion T h e direct and indirect cost t o the world's economy due to the corrosion of ferrous metals was reviewed in the paper by W. H. J. Vernon of the D e partment of Scientific and Industrial Research at Teddington, England. In 1922, the author said, Sir Robert Hadfield estimated that the annual world cost of steel and iron wasted by rusting
VOLUME
2 7, N O .
was i n the neighborhood of $3 billion, a figure that is dwarfed by the reliable estimates of today's losses. On top of this, Vernon pointed out, the heavy losses of other materials and heavy increases of power necessary to maintain supplies lost or hindered by corrosion must be computed. As an example of this type of loss, Vernon presented the situation in which the capacity of iron pipe i s reduced by the formation of insoluble corrosion products. Jordan, quoting Wilson and Howson, the author said, estimated that the loss of revenue from this cause in respect to the water mains in the United States approaches $40 million annually. Georges Chaudron of the Sorbonne indicated in his paper that it is not always possible to strike an accountancy type of balance between the value of the metal lost in the process of corrosion and the real loss effected b y this corrosion. As an example he cited the case in which a massive piece of metal may suffer a considerable degree of corrosion without losing its qualities, and how a small piece of m e t a l whose function may depend on its surface condition may lose all commercial value due to a slight corrosive attack. Because of such instances, it i s difficult. Chaudron declared, to supply engineers and managements with information on which to base prime cost. In addition to the ordinary protection of metal, Chaudron asserted there are often many other factors which justify large expenditures o n special coating. For a n example of this type of situation, he called upon the chemical industry's use of gold, silver, platinum, and stainless steels to plate iron and protect it from the action of corrosive reagents. T h e prevention of corrosion by means other than protective coatings was outlined in the paper b y F. L. La Que of the International Nickel Co. Among these devices La Que listed the reduction of the humidity below certain critical limits, the addition of specific chemicals to inhibit corrosion conditions, the control of air supply, and the control of the flow of corrosives in contact with the metals concerned. On the humidity question, La Que revealed that it has been well established that when the relative humidity is kept below 30%, corrosion is negligible and if the control of humidity is supplemented b y the use of protective oils and greases o n the metals, the critical humidity m a y be increased to 45%. Deaeration t o remove the oxygen from the metal's environment is another way in which metals may be protected from corrosion, L a Que said. This practice has found considerable use in the pretr eat ment of boiler feed waters. T h e control of corrosion b y the introduction of a small concentration of some compound that stifles either the anodic
38 . S E P T E M B E R
19,
1949
Mrs, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, chair' man of Indian delegation to UN and Indian ambassador to the United States or cathodic portions of normal corrosion or both was also included in the review b y La Que. Most inhibitors function as chemically or physically absorbed films which either change the electrochemical properties of the metal or serve as mechanical barriers to the normal corrosion process. In the latter part of his paper La Que discussed the subject of cathodic protection of metals and pointed out that the practice is not a new one, having been developed by Sir Humphry Davy in 1824 as a means of protecting the copper sheathing on warships by the current generated by the galvanic corrosion of zinc. Through the years the practice has grown in size. La Que said, and today magnesium and alloys of aluminum have been added to the list of cathodic protectors. A bright picture was painted for the future of titanium in the paper presented by O. C. Ralston of the Bureau of Mines. The author revealed that the metal has only recently been made on a scale of 200 lb. per day in a sufficiently pure form to be ductile and workable. For this reason it has not yet come into full industrial prominence. Ralston ranked titanium with the light metals because it is about half as dense as iron but twice as dense as magnesium, and 50% heavier than aluminum but six times as strong. Titanium is of the same strength as stainless steel and twice that of mild steel, Ralston added, and its strength to weight ratio is superior to that of the other three metals. I t is the fourth most abundant metal in nature of those that are stable in air and capable of being used for structural purposes. Another factor that will work toward the increased use of titanium is that it possesses extremely good qualities of corrosion resistance, particularly under marine conditions, Ralston concluded.
2691
