News of the Week
Du Pont returns to coal for process steam Despite uncertainties and unresolved obstacles, Du Pont plans to move ahead with its program to increase use of coal as a boiler fuel in its chemical plants. By the end of the 1980's, the company says it will be generating 75% of its process steam using coal, up from 40% in 1980 and from a low point of 22% in 1973. Part of the reason behind Du Pont's increased coal use is the com pany's conclusion that coal has a real price advantage over oil and natural gas, according to Harold E. May, the company's vice president for materi als and logistics, speaking at a Na tional Petroleum Refiners Associa tion Conference in San Antonio. The company has decided that coal can be burned economically (in plants that presently can use coal) even with added investment for environmental controls. So all Du Pont plants with current coal-using capability will be converted back to it by 1980. More difficult economic questions arise when new boilers have to be in stalled to use coal, May says. Eco nomic analysis of new coal-fired boilers shows that the need for scrubbers to remove pollutants such as sulfur compounds will determine whether small industrial boilers, producing less than 200,000 lb of steam per hour, are attractive. Hence, May says, the outcome of the current Congressional debate in Washington on amendments to the Clean Air Act will be critical to companies consid ering coal in small boilers. If scrub bers instead of low-sulfur coal are required for small boilers, increased
May: Congressional debate critical 6
C&EN April 13, 1981
industrial use of coal will face a sig nificant obstacle, he warns. May adds that economics differ between industrial boilers and the larger electric utility boilers. Regu lations specific to manufacturing boilers should consider costs and en vironmental impact resulting from the smaller scale of industrial boiler operation. In addition to coal's immediate price advantage over petroleum, other attractions for coal could include a possible breakthrough in technology to improve its economics, May says. Further attractions could come in new emission-control and deprecia tion laws based more on practical costs. May says that new coal-fired boilers typically cost three to eight times as much as oil-fired boilers, but faster depreciation rates could soften the blow to capital. D
Fluor wins bid for St. Joe Minerals A spirited takeover battle that lasted three and a half weeks has settled future ownership of nonferrous met als producer St. Joe Minerals. Victory for Fluor Corp. in the bidding will produce, if the merger goes through, a combination of engineering and re sources worth more than $6 billion a year based on 1980 revenues. After a quick initial merger agree ment (C&EN, April 6, page 8), Fluor and St. Joe obtained equally fast ap proval by their boards of directors. Fluor then began its two-part take over proposal with a tender offer of $60 per share for 45% of St. Joe's common stock, to be followed by a stock swap of 1.2 shares of Fluor for each of the remaining St. Joe shares. Total value of the two moves would be about $2.6 billion. Upon Fluor's $60-per-share pro posal, rival bidder Joseph E. Seagram & Sons waited a week and then left the field by withdrawing its $45-pershare tender offer for St. Joe. Sea gram chairman Edgar M. Bronfman said, ' O u r analyses of the values in volved do not support an increased offer of the magnitude required to acquire the 100% of St. Joe stock that had been our objective." St. Joe and Fluor already have ex pressed satisfaction with their deal, although it is very expensive for Fluor. Fluor will have to obtain a large loan to handle the financing and must add 30 million new shares to its 49 million shares currently outstanding. Treatment of Fluor stock on Wall
Street, with a 12% price drop since Fluor's bid, indicates some disap proval over anticipated dilution of the combined company's earnings. But Fluor has what it wants, di versification into natural resources. And St. Joe has a well-off, miningminded parent that will give it man agement autonomy and infusions of capital if needed. Π
Enzyme's role in learning probed More clues to the biochemical events that take place within nerve cells as sociated with learning come from a collaboration of researchers at the University of Texas and the Univer sity of California, Irvine. William F. Bennett of the Univer sity of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, along with California colleagues Michael Browning and Gary Lynch, has been studying the changes in cell biochemistry that occur after cells from an animal's hippocampus are subjected to brief electrical stimulation. The hippo campus, a deep-seated region of the brain, is thought to be involved in learning and memory, and the elec trical stimulations the researchers use attempt to mimic the processes that occur in a normal brain during learning, Bennett explains. "One of the prominent changes that takes place in the hippocampus after electrical stimulation to mimic learning is a very large change in the level of activity of the protein pyru vate dehydrogenase," Bennett says. And the activity of this enzyme, in turn, seems to affect cell calcium concentrations. What the scientists believe is hap pening is that increased activity of the protein causes resting nerve cells to retain larger amounts of calcium than they would otherwise. It is the in crease in cell calcium concentration in response to electrical stimulation that eventually triggers the release of neurotransmitters and causes a nerve cell to "fire." Thus, a higher level of calcium in a resting nerve cell means that it can respond more quickly to the next electrical impulse. "The important implication for neurobiologists is that the activity of the protein allows for both quick and long-lasting changes in the nerve cells, both of which are necessary to explain how learning takes place at the biochemical level," Bennett says. The work is funded by the National Science Foundation. π
