one there, together with Peerless Chemical (New York), but decided against it because the market which they expected never materialized. Wyandotte also claims that existing capacity in Venezuela was a factor. Now, Ponce Chemicals will build a 20 ton-per-day plant, due on stream b y mid-1962. Ponce will be owned 75% by West India Co., a wholly owned subsidiary of Morton, and 2 5 % by Ponce Salt, a Puerto Rican solar salt producer. The plant will be located near Ponce. The plant will use De Nora cells to make its product, will get raw material from Morton's operation on Inagua, an island in the Bahamas. Besides making caustic and chlorine, Ponce will upgrade chlorine to hypochlorides, other chlorides, and chlorates and make hydrochloric acid. Puerto Rico has two other plants which could supply raw materials to other chemical companies. One is Caribe Nitrogen, 49% owned by W. R. Grace. (The rest is owned largely by local interests.) Its plant at Guanica makes anhydrous ammonia (125 tons daily), sulfuric acid (350 tons), and ammonium sulfate (400 tons). Another is Caribbean Refining near San Juan, the island's capital. Caribbean has only 18,000 barrels per day of capacity but is expanding to 30,000 barrels per day. Still too small to support a petrochemical industry, it nevertheless has such ambitions. These are the plants upon which Puerto Rico hopes to build an integrated chemical industry. Meanwhile, other mainland companies are setting up shop on the island. Paint. Reichhold Chemicals del Caribe, a joint venture of Reichhold and Superior Paints (Puerto Rico), is breaking ground near San Juan for a plant to produce alkyd resins, polyvinyl acetate emulsions, and acrylics. W. P. Fuller will open a paint plant at Bayomon, and Sherwin-Williams, Glidden, and Dutch Master (Brooklyn) have also filed applications for tax exemptions on paint operations. Lestoil Products has already received its tax exemption for a plant to make liquid detergents and dry bleach. And Du Pont, whose engineers have been scouring the island for plant sites, confirms that it is considering a plant to make bromine from sea water. However, the company hasn't settled on Puerto Rico or, for that matter, on such a project itself.
Latin Americans Push Ch.E. Education Schools modernize curricula and facilities, shy away from training specialists Chemical engineering colleges in Latin America face some big hurdles before they can help to promote the industrialization of their countries. This was the consensus among chemical engineering educators airing problems at the First Inter-American Congress of Chemical Engineering at San Juan, Puerto Rico (see page 101). Like Latin American chemical engineers, who have no standardized nomenclature, the chemical engineering schools have no common standards. The idea of who is and who is not a chemical engineer varies from country to country in Latin America. In some of the smaller, less industrialized countries, chemical engineering teaching is still affected by the old concept of the industrial chemist—a man who can run a chemical plant, handling everything from mechanical problems to running analytical tests. He may be the only technical man in the plant, with no adequate technicians to help. Sometimes a good chemical engineer from the U.S. may not be able to handle such a job, because he hasn't had enough analytical chemistry. But in other countries chemical engineering education may follow similar lines to those in the U.S. "Nearly all of our text books are American—
although we do use one German one," says Dr. W. Dreifuss of the University of Conception, Conception, Chile. Of the four chemical engineering schools in Chile, three have curricula similar to those in the U.S. The other follows the German system of separating chemists and "process engineers." Reading English is not much of a problem for Chilean university students. In the secondary schools Chilean students must study two foreign languages. French is compulsory, and the second is usually English, although it may be German or Italian. But languages can be a problem in Latin America. One professor from a small Central American country complained that it is almost impossible to attract U.S. chemical engineering teachers who can speak Spanish. Because studies in the humanities have received a great deal of emphasis in the secondary schools, little work in these subjects is included in the university curriculum in Chile. Dr. Dreifuss believes that education on a university level in these subjects should be on an extracurricular basis. In Chile, the educational system resembles that in France to some extent. It is a six-six system—six years in a secondary school and six years in the
NEW FACILITIES. New building houses part of the expanding Technological Institute of the University of Concepcion at Concepcion, Chile NOV.
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UNIT OPERATIONS. Chemical engineering students at the University of Concepcion, Concepcion, Chile, get training in a modern unit operations laboratory. The curriculum is similar to those in the U.S. But the approach to chemical engineering education varies a great deal from one Latin American country to another, and sometimes from one institution to another within the same country
prerequisites has been set up so that students may take courses in logical order. This is a big help to the high proportion of students who must work part time to support themselves; now they can arrange their courses to fit in with their outside work. One of the big changes in the new system is that large lecture classes are replaced by small classes in which the students take an active part. A big emphasis is placed on backing up theoretical work with practical work—under the same professor. Normal time for the curriculum is five years for a full-time student. The academic year begins in March rather than September, since seasons are reversed in the southern hemisphere, and is divided into two semesters. Dr. de la Puente doesn't claim the new system is original or that it is per-
university for a bachelor's degree. A chemical engineering graduate coming to the U.S. can usually get a master's degree in one year. Countries Differ. Requirements for chemical engineers are different in different countries. In Argentina, for example, when the faculty of chemical engineering of Universidad Nacional del Litoral at Santa Fe was set up in 1919, Argentina was an almost completely agricultural country and underdeveloped industrially. But big economic, social, and political changes have taken place in Argentina since then. These led to a complete overhauling of the system of chemical engineering education in 1957, according to UNL's Dr. Nemesio César de la Puente. Courses are more rigidly defined than they had been, and a system of 24
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fectly organized. But he believes it is the best system that could be put into operation in a short time and fit in with the particular conditions that exist in Argentina. At the Universidad de la Republica Oriental del Uruguay, at Montevideo, Uruguay, the practical portion of chemical engineering education has been held up by a lack of funds for building unit operations laboratories and other large-scale facilities needed in modern engineering education. However, in recent years, UNESCO has helped with funds so that the chemical engineering laboratories could be modernized with new equipment and a new professor (from Germany) could be employed. Students pay no tuition there. The course is a five-year one. The University of Puerto Rico attracts a number of Latin American chemical engineering students. A U.S. land grant institution, the university has a five-year chemical engineering course. The first three years are the same for all engineers. This year there are 15 chemical engineering students in the fifth year and 40 in the fourth year. No Specialists. One thing most Latin American chemical engineering educators seem to agree upon is that they can't afford to turn out specialists. ' O n e year one of our graduates may be running a synthetic ammonia plant. The next he may be working in a wood processing plant," says one South American. It is harder and harder to put everything into the curriculum, to train general chemical engineers, because technology is advancing so rapidly. But the chemical industries in Latin America are not yet big enough to support many specialists. At the University of Concepcion in Chile there is a slight specialization during the last year. The student takes an elective in the general field of his thesis or engineering projectbiochemical engineering, for example. As the beginning of an attempt toward establishing professional standards recognized all over Latin America, Dr. Cesar Fighetti of the University of Concepcion in Chile has proposed the establishment of a Latin American Association of Faculties and Schools of Chemical Engineering. This organization would establish minimum requirements for chemical engineering education and help to advance chemical engineering teaching generally.
