INDUSTRY & BUSINESS
Epoxy Ante Goes Up Carbide will boost capacity of epoxide unit now under construction in W . Va. JDY this time next year, producers of epoxy coatings and plastics will have had a chance to evaluate on commercial scale a bevy of new resin intermediates. And Union Carbide Chemicals will have gained a good idea of the commercial r>otential for a line of epoxide and oxygenated chemicals now available only in development quantities. Construction of a unit to make the chemicals is now well under way at Institute/ \V. Ya. Even before the plant is on stream. Carbide has announced a "substantial" scale-up of its capacity. After the project was reviewed recently, company management decided to boost its size as a show of confidence in the new products. The expanded plant is designed to turn out more than 10 million pounds of the new chemicals annually when it is completed in mid-1959. What looks now like the most promising chemical from the new Institute unit is Epoxide-201 (3,4-epoxy-6methylcyclohexylmetln 1-3,4 - epoxy - 6metln ley clohexanecarhoxy late). This, says Carbide, is a "truly new epoxide resin" material; it can be used to prepare plastics and coatings having better color stability and resistance to heat distortion than epoxies based on the reaction of Bisphenol-A with epichlorohydrin. Key to its color stability is its cycloaliphatic structure, which is free of the phenolic groups that often cause color instability in resins made with bisphenol. Carbide says. Moreover, a lower equivalent weight and a shorter distance between epoxide groups in Epoxide-201 results in plastics that are more highly crosslinked or thermosetting. Thus it can be formulated with many common hardeners to produce plastics that stand up well under high temperatures. For example, with phthalic anhydride as a hardener, Epoxide-201 gives a cured resin having a heat distortion temperature of over 450° F.; traditional bisphenolglyeidyi epoxy resins under similar conditions have a heat distortion temperature of 264° F. Carbide claims, too, that the new material is more reactive with acid and anhydride Tiardeners, making fast cures possible. And it has 32
C&EN
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PRODUCTION (Chemicals & A l l i e d Products v s . I n d u s t r i a l ) BASE PERIOD INDEX, 1947-1949= 100, SEASONALLY ADJUSTED 200i * * CHEMICALS # ALLIED' PRODUCTS > /** - I - •»-• l — r - ' - l r - l - v
1958
C ^ I N Ificieic: o f Stock Prices JAN.t'54 OPENING; PRICES - 1 0 0
PITSOLElJMi
300 250 -227.4 200
P^^x ,^W!82.9
150
iTr" S E C C o m p o s i t e index 4
100
iilili
300
4th Qtr.
1st Qtr.
2nd Qtr.
3rd Qtr. 1958
a relatively low viscosity at room tem perature and so is easier to handle. Dicyclopentadiene dioxide is another intermediate for high-temperature epoxy resins that Carbide will make in its new plant. Derived from dicyclo pentadiene and peracetic acid, this ma terial can be used with anhydride hard eners and polyol initiators to prepare cured materials stable at about 500° F. for at least 100 hours. Other chemical intermediates and resin materials Carbide expects to ship from the Institute plant include: vinylcyclohexene monoxide, vinylcyclohexenc dioxide (a viscosity reducing agent for epoxy resins), styrene oxide, allyl epoxystearult, and caprolactone. It will also market di-2-ethylhexyl epoxy tetrahydrophthalate and di-isodecyl epoxy tetrahydrophthalate—two all-syn thetic combination plasticizer-stabilizers for vinyl resins. The Institute plant will be used, too, for commercial custom epoxidation of materials difficult to epoxidize with usual reagents. Output of the plant can be balanced, as market demand warrants, between the various prod ucts it is designed to produce.
AMA Queries Sun Pills The American Medical Association has placed a caution sign on sun-tan pills (C&EN, June 23, page 3 0 ) . Use fulness and safety of the pills haven't been definitely proved, reports the AMA's committee on cosmetics. And the value of sun tanning itself is ques tioned in the report. AMA concurs with findings that the drug, 8-methoxypsoralen, enhances tan ning of normal skin and increases tol erance to light in sun-sensitive persons. But the association says that long term, unsupervised use poses several ques tions: • Exactly how effective is the drug in increasing sun tanning and light tolerance? • What happens to the skin when the drug is taken and followed by sun exposure for many years? • Will it affect the incidence of skin cancer? • What effect does the drug have on gastrointestinal and liver diseases or cl ironic infections? When Upjohn marketed the sun-tan pills earlier this summer, the company reported that it was evaluating the compound for treating a variety of skin
S o many interesting reactioVis
start
here
H,C
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H2C
^CHCH*OH
ΤΗ FA
Versatile QO tetrahydrofurfuryl alcohol ( T H F A ) is a wonderful starting point for a number of highly functional chemical compounds. It reacts as a primary alcohol for the preparation of high boiling esters and ethers. Its ring has the properties of a cyclic ether and reacts in these unique ways: 1 . Ring cleavage t o yield open chain compounds as pentanetriof* 2 . Cleavage a n d subsequent cyclization t o 2 , 3 - d i h y d r o p y r a n . 3 . Cleavage a n d cyclization t o p y r i d i n e .
A s a plasticizer, a chemical intermediate or a powerful solvent for resins, gums, dyes and many complex organic compounds, T H F A offers you a rich field for investigation with great promise of reward. To aid you, we offer a comprehensive book packed with informa tion about THFA—its chemistry, physical properties, uses and other valuable data. It's yours for the asking. W r i t e for Bulletin 2 0 6
The Quaker Oate (pmpany CHEMICALS DEPARTMENT Q u a k e r Qzts Compaq
QC CHEMICALS!
3 3 3 M The Merchandise Mart, Chicago 5 4 , Illinois Room 5 3 3 M , 120 W a l l Street, N e w York 5, N e w Y o r k Room 433M,48 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd., Portland 1 4 , O r e g o n In Europe: Quaker Oats-Graanproducten N. V., Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Quaker Oats (France) S. A., 3, Rue Pillet-Will # Paris IX, France; A / S " O t a , " Copenhagen, S. Denmark In Australia: Swift & Company, Ltd., Sydney In J a p a n : F. Kanematsu & Company, Ltd., Tokyo
SEPT.
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C&EN
33
INDUSTRY & BUSINESS
QUARTZ GLASS
disorders. Also, indications are that the drug actually protects persons with sun allergy, or those who may develop skin cancer from too much exposure to sunlight. Meantime, Upjohn says it has no official comment on the AMA committee's position. **r *w
TRANSPARENT TUBING, ROD AND APPARATUS TO SPECIFICATION We also Manufacture:
Boats Crucibles Ground Joints
yr
• International Cooperation Administration signs the largest guaranty contract in the history of its program to encourage and facilitate U. S. private investment abroad. The contract, with W . R. Grace, assures the company of convertibility into dollars of up to $17,750,000 from American private investments in the new chemical fertilizer plant being built in Trinidad (C&EN, July 28, page 1 9 ) . • Denver O x y g e n , a wholly owned subsidiary of Chemetron, is now operating its four Colorado industrial and medical gas plants under the name of National Cylinder Gas Division. As part of the integration, NCG has formed a Rocky Mountain regional branch. • Du Pont buys Cornwell Chemical's Cornwells Heights sulfuric acid plant, near Philadelphia. The long-idle plant will become part of D u Pout's Grasselli Chemicals Department, will be known as the Delaware River plant.
Ball Joints Wool Stopcocks Distilling Apparatus and all other Standard Laboratory items.
KAREL HACKL 463 HARROW ROAD LONDON, W.10 ENGLAND
• Hankins Container, Cleveland, may merge into Flintkote, pending approval of the boards of directors and stockholders of both companies. The merger agreement calls for an exchange of stock-1.234 shares of Flintkote $5.00 par common stock for each of Hankins' 267,458 shares of $10 par capital stock. Under the proposal, the identity of Hankins would be maintained. • Glyco Products, New York City, will become a subsidiary of Chas. L. Huisking and will be known as Glyco Chemicals Corp. Huisking, also of New York, manufactures raw materials for the pharmaceutical industry. Glyco, with a plant in Williamsport, Pa., produces emulsifiers, stabilizers, synthetic waxes, and chelating agents.
New Facilities • . • Telephones: LADBROOKE 6 4 9 6 - 7 LADBROOKE 7 2 5 4
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C&EN
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• Consolidation Coal is now operating its $13.5 million, 108 mile coal pipeline between Georgetown and Eastlake, Ohio. To supply its power station in Eastlake, Cleveland Electric Illuminating will buy 18 million tons of pipeline coal from Consol over the next 15 years.
• Dow's Texas Division completes an expansion at Freeport, Tex., that ups capacity of methyl chloride and methylene chloride by 207c. Meanwhile, at Midland, Mich., D o w has started to produce iminodiacetic acid, a difunctional acid used as an intermediate for surface active agents, complex salts, and chelating agents. • Glidden sets up a new plastics research and development lab at its paint division research center in Cleveland. The company is making an over-all effort to centralize all R&D work on new products. • Bestwall Gypsum starts building a $7.5 million plant in Brunswick, Ga., has plans for two more somewhere on the Atlantic Coast. The Brunswick plant is scheduled to be completed in late 1959, will have a capacity of 300 million square feet a year of gypsum board and lath products. • W m . S. Merrell Co., division of Vick Chemical, completes an organic chemistry research laboratory at Cincinnati, Ohio. Cost: almost $1 million. • American Lava Corp. has complered a plant at Chattanooga, Tenn., to make nuclear fuel pellets of urania or uraniathoria mixtures. The plant will also make thermal neutron detection foils of dysprosium or gadolinium oxide dispersed in aluminum oxide. American Lava is a subsidiary of Minnesota Mining & Mfg. • Mexico Refractories will build its sixth U. S. plant at Stockton, Calif. Besides the $2 million Stockton plant, to turn out fireclay, silica brick, and related products, the firm will complete a $1 million modernization of its Mexico, Mo., plant b y the end of this year.
Financial • • • • Procter & Gamble tallied record sales and earnings for the fiscal year ended June 30. Sales of $1.3 billion were 12rr ahead of the year before; net earnings totaled $73.2 million, up 8 ' / . Earnings equaled $3.56 a share, compared with $3.44 in fiscal 1957. • Koppers has reduced its third quarter dividend to 40 cents a share, down from 62 1 ._, cents paid in previous quarters this year. The cut was made "in view of present business conditions/' Koppers* earnings through the first half of the year amounted to 80 cents per share.
