COKE AND GYPSUM:
Firms Under Fire The coke and gypsum industries came under fire for restraint of trade and price fixing last week. The Federal Trade Commission issued a complaint charging restraint of trade against Great Lakes Carbon Corp. and eight oil companies. Nashville, Tenn., has joined the growing list of cities and other groups filing price-fixing suits for treble damages against the five major gypsum wallboard producers and their trade group, the Gypsum Association. Besides Great Lakes Carbon, the FTC complaint names American Oil Co., Colorado Oil and Gas Corp., Continental Oil Co., CRA, Inc., Mobil Oil Corp., Sun Oil Co., Suntide Refining Co., and Texaco, Inc. FTC alleges that long-term contracts between Great Lakes Carbon and the oil companies for all or substantially all of the oil companies' green industrial petroleum coke result in an unreasonable restraint of trade. "During 1965," the complaint states, "32 refineries in the U.S. produced and sold approximately 3.6 million tons of . . . petroleum coke," the total U.S. production. The complaint further says that in 1965 Great Lakes Carbon purchased 1.6 million tons (44% of the green coke market) of the coke from 13 of the refineries. Great Lakes Carbon and American Oil have already said they will oppose the FTC action. The FTC complaint also says that because Great Lakes Carbon has longterm contracts (five to 20 years) with the refineries, other purchasers of green coke have had to enter into similar contracts, and more than 95% of the U.S. output of the material is sold under long-term contracts. This industrywide practice of long-term contracts aggravates the trade situation. The suit against the gypsum producers by Nashville, Tenn., was filed in the U.S. District Court in Chicago. It lists as defendants the Gypsum Association and U.S. Gypsum, National Gypsum, Kaiser Cement & Gypsum, Flintkote Co., and Fibreboard Corp. The treble damage suit cites violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Gypsum Association would not even admit that it had been charged, and the producers refused to comment about the charge. They will no doubt have more to say at the trial. The suit says the companies account for 98% of the U.S. sales of gypsum wallboard and that they have conspired to ûx prices, selling conditions, and divided markets. Such action has caused higher prices for wallboard than would have been the case with free and open competition, the suit contends.
Smelting furnace at Kennecott Utah plant Chemical treatment a substitute
COPPER:
Direct Process Sought Direct chemical reduction of copper ore will be examined by Anaconda Co. in a multimillion-dollar pilot plant, now under construction at Tucson, Ariz. Chemical treatment of mined ore will be substituted for heating in a smelting furnace. Anaconda hopes that the new approach will result in saving time and money. Furthermore, the approach should help in reducing air pollution. In the conventional procedure, copper ore is first put through a process that floats away unusable materials, leaving sulfide ore concentrates. These concentrates are then smelted (superheated) to drive off the sulfur content as sulfur oxides. Such oxides contribute considerably to air pollution. In the new pilot plant, Anaconda will test a process in which the sulfide concentrates, after conventional flotation, are treated with concentrated sulfuric acid. This converts the copper to copper sulfate. Iron sulfate and other impurities will then be removed by liquid ion exchange. After this purification step, the copper will be recovered by an electrolysis process. An alternative procedure to be tested is the separation of copper (after the sulfuric acid treatment step)
by precipitating it as cuprous cyanide, followed by reduction with hydrogen. This latter method is a very good purification technique because of its selectivity, according to Francis L. Holderreed, director of metallurgy for Anaconda. The basic purpose of the project, Mr. Holderreed says, is to develop a method using hydrometallurgy instead of pyrometallurgy to recover copper metal from sulfide ores. Anaconda hopes that at least one of the processes to be tested will prove to be economically more feasible than cleaning up smelter stack emissions. "If one of these processes proves successful it will enable the reduction and refining of copper in one operation and will practically eliminate the emissions now produced by conventional methods," according to Mr. Holderreed. C. J. Parkinson, Anaconda's board chairman, emphasizes that the work is still in the experimental stage and there is as yet no assurance of economic feasibility. But preliminary studies have been encouraging, and the pilot plant will represent a substantial investment by Anaconda in the field of air quality control, Mr. Parkinson points out. The company hopes to gain—in addition to saving time and money—greater flexibility in the future in locating copper ore processing plants. DEC. 15, 1969 C&EN
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