clause of OSHA's 1970 charter, which requires companies to provide workplaces free of recognized hazards. Cyanamid has appealed the Oct. 9 citation. In a prepared statement, Cyanamid termed OSHA's charge "absolutely false." The company defended its policy, enforced since October 1978, of removing women of childbearing age from work areas where they could potentially be exposed to lead. It "emphatically" denied that it forced female employees to be sterilized. However, Cyanamid said that it "agrees with OSHA, as stated in the preamble to the lead regulations, that OSHA standards do not adequately protect the fetus," and it "will continue to exclude women of childbearing potential from these areas." To be able to continue to work in these potentially hazardous areas, five women at the Willow Island plant underwent sterilization. In defense of her agency's action, assistant secretary Eula Bingham claimed that "no worker must be forced to sacrifice his or her right to conceive children in order to hold a job."
That exposure to excessive lead levels presents reproductive hazards to the female and toxic effects to her fetus is known. Not well documented, but suspected, are reproductive and genetic hazards to the male and his offspring. Cyanamid claims that it is in compliance with the current OSHA lead standard, but that this standard produces a lead blood level in exposed female workers that is toxic to the fetus. If the current standard, which OSHA set at a feasible level, does not protect the fetus, and a company institutes a policy similar to Cyanamid's, is the standard for lead in the workplace then discriminatory against fertile women? Neither OSHA nor Cyanamid would address this issue. Cyanamid claims compliance with the current standard, but this has not been verified by OSHA. Earlier this year, after a four-month inspection at the Willow Island plant, OSHA cited the company for several violations, two of which were for excessive worker exposure to lead and chromates. With the October citation, proposed penalties against Cyanamid come to $35,000. •
Radio waves release oil from shale A new way of exploiting oil shales, being developed by Texaco, Raytheon, and Badger, is being fieldtested at a Texaco oil shale property in Uintah County, Utah. According to Texaco, the process uses radio-frequency electric fields to heat deposits containing immobile heavy hydrocarbons. The RF heating produces gaseous and liquid hydrocarbons in place, without mining, retorting, or waste disposal problems. The concept calls for a combination heating-pumping unit to be lowered into a small vertical hole drilled by conventional oil-drilling methods into a known oil shale deposit. The unit provides a means of transmitting RF energy into the deposit and also a conduit for bringing liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons to the surface. The process also is expected to be suitable for other hydrocarbon-bearing deposits, such as tar sands, Texaco notes. An important feature of the process, Texaco says, is its ability to heat large quantities of oil shale without depending on the conduction of heat through the shale itself, which is normally a poor conductor. Although large amounts of electric power will be needed to heat the hydrocarbons, the developers expect the process to show a comfortably positive energy balance and to be competitive with other processes. 8
C&EN Oct. 22, 1979
Among the matters to be determined in the field tests are the most suitable frequencies and the effective range of the RF heating effect. At this point, the companies are vague about specific numbers. However, it appears that the tests will involve longerthan-microwave radio frequencies, and that holes will be drilled from "a few" to "several" feet apart. The companies note that essentially none of the RF energy will be radiated to the atmosphere. Most shale oil processes currently under development involve bringing the shale to the surface, where it is heated to release the hydrocarbons. Vast quantities of rock must be handled and waste disposal problems are formidable. Also, most surface processes require large amounts of water, a resource that is often not plentiful in the oil shale regions of the western U.S. The Texaco-Raytheon-Badger approach would avoid these problems. Other in-situ processes, involving breaking up and underground partial combustion of oil shale, also are being developed (C&EN, Aug. 27, page 20). Successful demonstration of the process would open up for economic production vast U.S. reserves of shale oil, the companies say. They add that commercial quantities of oil produced by their process might be available by the mid- to late-1980's. •
New ethylene process may cut costs 20% The intense drive to improve commercial chemical processes in the past few years has produced another possible breakthrough, this one a new process for making ethylene, the number one organic chemical. Among other advantages, the process promises a production cost saving of up to 20%. The process, which also yields other olefins and some aromatics, is called Thermal Regenerative Cracking. Development of the process was announced last week by two divisions of Gulf Oil—Gulf Oil Chemicals and Gulf Canada Ltd.—and by Stone & Webster's Stone & Webster Engineering subsidiary. The development, under way since 1971, is headed toward a $15 million pilot demonstration plant sponsored equally by the three partners at Gulfs Cedar Bayou petrochemical complex at Baytown, Tex. The plant is scheduled for operation by late 1980. Although yielding much the same products as in the standard steamcracking processes for making olefins and aromatics, TRC achieves greater flexibility and lower costs in several respects, say the developers. The key, which the developers will not detail, is apparently a mechanism for handling a long-time limitation in olefins plants—carbon deposits. Such deposits can clog up the equipment. Stone & Webster says that the new process is not limited by "carbon laydown" problems. As a result, TRC can accommodate heavier, more carbon-rich feedstocks, including residual fuel oil, the type used by electric power plants. The heaviest feedstock in current olefins plants is gasoil, a light distillate fuel oil. Other feedstocks used in both TRC and conventional olefins plants range in size all the way down to simple ethane. TRC also offers "virtually unlimited cracking severity" (reaction temperature variation), the developers say. This enables a greater range in the already quite variable ratio of products from these crackers. Other advantages touted for TRC are lower energy use, lower capital costs, lower plant emissions, and the ability to use low-grade fuels, including coal, for process heat. Stone & Webster says that TRC can be adapted to existing crackers making olefins. However, the central cracking furnace would have to be replaced. The rest of the plant could stay about the same. •
