U.S. Steel plans to sell ag chemicals unit U.S. Steel has entered an agreement to sell its largest chemical operation—the USS Agri-Chemicals division—in a leveraged buy-out to certain members of the division's management headed by C. M. Henderson, the unit's president. Terms of the sale, which is expected to be completed during the second quarter of this year, have not been disclosed. The division is an integrated manufacturer, marketer, and resale distributor of a wide range of agricultural products and services. Headquartered in Atlanta, Ga., it has a number of plants producing primarily nitrogen and phosphate fertilizers. As U.S. Steel's largest chemical division, the agrichemicals unit had sales of about $380 million in 1983, 35% of the company's chemical sales. (Last year's figures are not yet avail-
able.) Its other chemical units include industrial chemicals w i t h about $280 million in sales in 1983, polyolefins $215 million, specialty chemicals $135 million, and intermediates $100 million. Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel is the only steel company in the U.S. with significant chemical holdings. Besides the 1982 acquisition of Marathon Oil, which brought it very little in terms of chemicals, the company earlier had gone on a chemical shopping tour, purchasing in the late 1970s such businesses as Novamont, a maker of polypropylene copolymers, and Uniroyal's acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene operations. The company's diversification into chemicals may be over, however. Not only has it not bought any chemical operations since 1979, but analysts say that the sale of the agricultural chemical division may signal the first in a line of divestitures of operations that U.S. Steel does not really want to keep. Those may well involve other chemical units.D
Computer model for fires developed at NBS Various investigators have been trying to develop and hone computer models of fire phenomena, but mostly the efforts have been aimed at research. Now, researchers at the National Bureau of Standards have completed an initial version of a model, called FAST, designed to be used by building and product designers, fire safety experts, and regulatory officials in state and local governments. FAST models the buildup of fire in a room or a compartment. It also predicts how the smoke and toxic gases will move from one compartment to another, how long it will take, and what the concentrations will be. "The model incorporates the same chemistry and physics as other models do, but it is considerably faster and much more 'robust,' " says Walter Jones, a scientist at the NBS Center for Fire Research in Gaithersburg, Md. The m o d e l , w r i t t e n in ANSI Fortran, can operate on mainframe and minicomputers. NBS researchers are experimenting with it on a microcomputer.
Much of the fire research conducted at NBS and other research organizations over the past 10 years provides the basis for the model. But the model is only a start, according to Richard Bukowski, head of smoke hazard research at NBS. Future versions will be able to model more phenomena, he says. For example, the next edition will include fire and smoke movement not only through corridors, elevators, and ventilation shafts, as the model does now, but through stairways. And future models also will take into account the effect that forced ventilation—heating and air conditioning—would have on a fire. Both a publication on the model and a computer tape are being made available through the National Technical Information Service, Springfield, Va. 22161. The publication, "A Model for the Transport of Fire, Smoke, and Toxic Gases (FAST)" (NBSIR 84-2934), can be ordered as PB 85-109130 for $10 prepaid. The tape, which includes a sample data file, can be ordered as PB 85-150555 for $400 prepaid. D
Carbide to reopen Institute MIC unit Union Carbide plans to start making methyl isocyanate (MIC) again at its Institute, W.Va., facility around April 1, assuming it has completed its internal investigation of the Dec. 3, 1984, gas-leak disaster in Bhopal, India. The company voluntarily shut down its Institute MIC unit after the chemical escaped from the smaller but similarly designed plant operated by Union Carbide India Ltd. in Bhopal, killing at least 2000 people. Because of the shutdown, Carbide says that later this year there will be domestic and overseas shortages of MIC and of pesticides made from it, even with an April 1 resumption of production. The company's pesticide unit in Beziers, France, for example, is expected to run out of MIC in a few weeks, Carbide says. Before reactivating the unit—the only MIC-producing plant in the U.S.—Carbide will both study the Bhopal investigation for its relevance to the Institute operation and evaluate safety equipment and procedures at Institute. According to the company, 62 small leaks of MIC have occurred at Institute since 1980, none of which have led to injuries.
Methyl isocyanate unit at Union Carbide plant in Institute, W. Va. February 18, 1985 C&EN
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