Jarruarg 1948
WALTER J. MURPHY, EDITOR
The Open Road Ahead design. In the industrial field it has been demonstrated time and time again that our scientific knowledge in most instances is applied in the same small increments that characterize its accumulation. In the Third Annual Unit Operations Review that this issue features, our contributing authors present another sizeable block of the really significant new advances in the unit operations that have found their way into print since last year’s review appeared. As reported, they represent for the most part the flowering of a i idea into a practical achievement, but each contains also the seeds for multiplied benefits when sown in other soil. Because the unit operations concept calls for a grouping of common operations, regardless of the particular industrial setting in which they exist, the review offers unusual opportunities of discovery and a stimulating environment in which application t o another industrial task can be visualized. The road ahead is open, but it behooves us to keep in mind the ditches at the sides and the unknown terrain around the next curve. After years of a situation in which purchases, operations, and distribution were controlled wholly or in part by the Government, we should now revive the critical faculties that must accompany our regained freedom of enterprise if it is to be successful. A period of unparalleled pent-up purchasing demand will help cushion the transition. But the buyer’s market is here or rapidly approaching for many of us, and our individual success largely depends on what we are able to give for the price we quote. This is just as true for those who have talent to sell ’as for those offering chemicals, equipment, or processes. The present high development of our economy is largely the consequence of a process of natural selection, occurring repeatedly over the years and nourished by a providential abundance of natural resources. As a matter of enlightened self-interest we hope this efficiency-rewarding procedure will be perpetuated. It must be preserved if our cherished system of free enterprise is to endure, for a strong incentive to high individual productivity is the special advantage offered by this economic system in the global competition between ideologies existing today. Our future wellbeing is intimately tied up in the continued realization of the time-honored phrase “May the best man win!”
nearly a decade of equipment priorities and A shortages, those in the chemical process industries will now find things changing. Many exhibitors FTER
at the Twenty-first Exposition of Chemical Industries,
’t
held December 1to 6 at New York City’s Grand Central Palace, quoted estimated delivery dates that recalled prewar days. The situation had its exceptions, of course, and many chemical raw materials and intermediates are still extremely difficult to obtain. However, the half-way mark seems to have been reached or even passed. Where do we go from here? A substantial reorientation of the viewpoint of the industrial chemist and chemical engineer seems to be in order. New opportunities should appear with increasing frequency for the enterprising, and those willing to make the effort involved in being among the first to act c m reasonably expect to be rewarded accordingly. Great advances were made in some fields under stress of war; new products are now becoming available, frequently at prices absurdly low when the original development cost is considered. The most intriguing characteristic about numerous war-born developments is that many of their peacetime industrial potentialities still lie fallow, waiting for a discerning eye and a fertile imagination t o reap byproduct benefits that may far exceed in value the original wartime application. Some of these opportunities, for example in fluorine chemistry, the Fischer-Tropsch process, and tonnage oxygen production, have become so widely publicized that it is almost trite to repeat them again. Others that have not yet received any conscious recognition can be confidently expected to emerge. The greatest benefits, if total effect is the criterion, will come from the multitude of instances where a new composition, a new mechanism, or a new procedure at last provides the missing link for a long-visualized improvement over an existing practice. Powder metallurgy produces a new filtering medium that is superior for some industrial uses. A back-washing device finally makes hard-pressed felt a feasible industrial filtering medium in dust-collecting devices. Centrifugal force is employed to transport distilland from a condenser surface to an evaporating surface in a new still 1
