EVER WANT
TO TELL
SOMEONE WHAT TO DO WITH THEIR PRODUCT? HERE'S YOUR CHANCE. Be bold. Tell us how you can use calcium nitrite. A few clues: Its redox properties, its proven effectiveness as a corrosion inhibitor, and its decomposition to nitrous acid in an acid solution make it applicable to many industrial uses. A 30-32% aqueous solution that will provide the integral element for the production of dyes, polymers, pharmaceuticals, insecticides, herbicides, and other organic and inorganic products. A chemical that may be the link to performance and cost advantages.
Now's your chance to tell someone what to do with their product. And at the same time, discover solutions to new product development and process improvement. Contact Sam Heleba at W. R. Grace & Co., Construction Products Division, 62 Whittemore Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02140. (617) 876-1400, x3148.
GRACE Construction Products
36
CIRCLE 15 ON READER SERVICE CARD December 10, 1984 C&EN
TECHNOLOGY
Process analytical chemistry is focus of center D e v e l o p m e n t of n e w analytical methods for application to automated chemical processes is the goal of a new industry-university research center, established with National Science Foundation funding at the University of Washington. Called the Center for Process Analytical Chemistry, the new facility brings to 20 the number of such industry-university cooperative research centers established in the U.S. with NSF support. As envisioned in the center's proposal (C&EN, June 4, page 7), its planned program represents a systems approach to on-line chemical analysis. The main emphasis will be to develop new types of sensing systems that can provide chemical information rapidly enough that it can be integrated with sophisticated data processing and intelligence capabilities to improve monitoring. But it also is expected to play a role as a training ground and information clearinghouse for process analytical chemistry as a new and highly interdisciplinary field. And it will provide master's and doctoral students a chance to pursue research in close contact with industrial scientists. Dealing as it will with process control, CPAC has broad application to t h e chemical processing industry. And, indeed, the center already has garnered 20 sponsoring institutions, many of them chemical processing companies. Each pays a $30,000 annual fee. Added to this is the NSF five-year grant of about $538,000. The plan for this center, as for the others, is that after five years, when the NSF grant runs out, the center will be self-sustaining through sponsor support. That shouldn't be difficult. "The interest has amazed us," says Bruce R. Kowalski, professor of chemistry at the university, who along with chemistry research professor James B. Callis is directing the center's efforts. The center has started off with a larger number of initial sponsors than any of the other cooperative research centers, although some that have been operating for a while have more. Kowalski says that be-
Kowalski: the interest has amazed us sides the 20 initial sponsors, another five to 10 companies are close to adding support. About 10 faculty investigators will be involved with the center, perhaps increasing to 15 as time goes on, with about twice the number of graduate students. Not all the investigators will be in Seattle. For example, one staff member will be Tomas Hirschfeld, senior scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, who has been appointed an affiliate professor of chemistry at the University of Washington. And there will be visiting scientists. For example, Jaromir Ruzicka of the Technical University of Denmark, the original developer of flow injection analysis, will be spending six m o n t h s at t h e center in its first year. Initial sponsoring institutions include Combustion Engineering, Dow Chemical, Du Pont, Eastman Kodak, Foxboro, Goodyear Tire & Rubber, Los Alamos National Laboratory (with sponsorships by two different divisions), Monsanto, Phillips Petroleum, 3M, Procter & Gamble, Savannah River Laboratory, Technicon, Weyerhaeuser, Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratories, Hewlett-Packard, Standard Oil (Ohio), Exxon Research & Engineering, and Rockwell-Hanford. James Krieger, Washington
