Technology materials to both high temperatures and strongly corrosive media. The scientists say their alloys are nearly 50% harder and stronger than standard 304 stainless steel. Furthermore, their alloys have a relatively low (around 5%) chromium content. Chromium is a critical material that the U.S. must import, so developing materials that use less of it has strategic importance. Wang and Merz expect to see applications of their technology in high-temperature water piping, solar heating and photovoltaic panels, salt water and corrosive chemicals piping, electrochemical electrodes and processes, geothermal turbine blades, and structural materials to be used in radiation fields. So far the technology is developed well enough to apply coatings of several millimeters to small metal objects such as turbine blades, Wang says. Work is under way to develop lowcost sputter deposition and electrodeposition processes for larger metal surfaces as well as to improve the coatings themselves and to explore their properties. Rebecca Rawlsy Washington
Biotechnology equipment sales rising It may be a while before any commercial winners emerge from firms engaged in R&D and pilot development on products derived from genetic engineering or exotic tissueculture techniques. But the heady growth in these efforts has turned them into a sizable and growing market for suppliers of equipment and systems to carry out the work. Indeed, last year's sales of equipment and systems to biotechnology practitioners amounted to more than $90 million. And a conservative estimate puts sales at $140 million by 1985. These figures are the bottom-line conclusions of a market study carried out by John A. McTaggart, director of Tag Marketing Associates, Erie, Pa. Specifically, the study analyzes the equipment opportunities presented by programs in recombinant DNA, monoclonal antibodies, and interferon. According to McTaggart, equipment targeted at protein expression on a pilot plant or production scale
USP/NF/FCC
accounts for the greatest growth. By 1985, he estimates, the largest categories in terms of annual sales will be fermenters, at $37 million; centrifuges, $20 million; final isolation and purification apparatus and consumables, $20 million; tissue-culture devices, $15 million; filters and membranes, $15 million; freeze driers, $7 million; freezers and refrigerators, $5 million; autoclaves and sterilizers, $5 million; and water purification equipment, $4.5 million. More than 29 categories of hardware, McTaggart says, turn out to be essential to biotechnology scaleup. And nine of these exhibit compound annual growth rates varying 14 to 50%. These products, he points out, are moving into pilot programs that, at a minimum, require $300,000 to $600,000 in process investments per facility. McTaggart says more than 500 institutions are pursuing recombinant DNA, monoclonal antibody, and interferon work. And equipment development efforts under way at both the hardware suppliers and end users, he says, will alter preferences significantly for systems used at those institutions. For example, McTaggart says that in particular, improvements in product cost vs. performance are required for isolation and purification, cell disruption, harvesting, assay of final product, continuous fermentation and cell culturing, denaturation control, and biohazard containment. The full study can be purchased for $3700 from Tag Marketing Associates at Suite 333,1611 Peach Street, Erie, Pa. 16501. D
More sensitive fission counter has long life Packaging . . . Price . . . Delivery In bottle or bulk, Fisher has the USP/ NF/FCC grade chemicals you need. In quantities you can use. At prices you'll like. And all available when you want them, thanks to a computerized ordering and delivery system second to none. For details, call (412) 562-8543 or contact your local Fisher representative.
Fisher Scientific 22 C&EN Sept. 6, 1982
A new fission counter developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory has 50 times the sensitivity of conventional fission counters, according to its developers, a group of instrument engineers at ORNL. The counter measures the number of neutrons produced by fissioning uranium or plutonium atoms. The device was developed for the Clinch River breeder reactor project. But in addition to the breeder reactor, it has other important potential applications, according to Ken H. Valentine, staff researcher at ORNL's instrumentation and controls divi-
Chemically Modified Surfaces in Catalysis and Electrocatalysis
ACS Symposium Series No. 192 Joel S. Miller, Editor Occidental Research
Corporation
Based on a symposium jointly sponsored by the Divisions of Inorganic, Analytical, and Petroleum Chemistry of the American Chemical Society. The state of the art of the chemical modification of surfaces The principal focus is on modification of materials for catalytic purposes and the modification of organic and inorganic electrode materials for electrocatalytic and photoelectrochemical applications. The use and limitations of several analytical techniques currently employed for characterization are also discussed. These methods include Electron Spectroscopy for Chemical Analysis, and NMR, IR, and UV-visible spectroscopy. An emerging interdisciplinary area of chemistry for surface scientists, electrochemists, catalytic chemists, polymer chemists, material scientists, solid state chemists, scientists involved with intercalation, silicon chemists, organometallic, organic, analytical, and inorganic chemists. CONTENTS Chemically Modified Surfaces in Catalysis • Poly(styrene-divinylbenzene)-Supported Catalysts • Homogeneous Rhodium(l) Catalyzed Alkene Hydrogenations • Reactive Organic Functional Groups • Polypyrrole Film Electrodes • Second Order EC Catalytic Mechanism • Semiconductor Photoelectrodes • Solution Reactivity Properties • Metallopolymer Films on Electrode Surfaces • Chemical Modification of Ti02 Surfaces • Electrochemistry of Silane-Derivatized Iridium • Improvements in Photoelectrochemical and Electrochromic Reactions • Derivatized Layered M(IV) Phosphonates • Intercalation of Molecular Catalysts in Layered Silicates • Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis • Reactivity of Catalysts Derived from Organometallics • Silacrowns
301 pages (1982) Clothbound US & Canada $36.95 Export $44.95 LC 82-8731 ISBN 0-8412-0727'-5 Order from: Distribution Office — 47 American Chemical Society 1155 Sixteenth St., N.W. Washington, D.C. 20036 or CALL TOLL FREE 800-424-6747 and use your credit card.
Technology sion, who headed the development team. For example, it could be used in monitoring subcriticality in future fuel-reprocessing plants. It also may find use in current light-water reactor control systems and diagnostics for fusion energy devices. The new counter is designed to operate reliably in high-temperature, high-radiation environments for up to 30 years. Conventional boron trifluoride counters exposed to fullpower neutron intensity have an expected lifetime of only two years. To get the greater sensitivity, the ORNL group had to overcome the limitations imposed by alpha activity inherent in the uranium coating of the counter. A conventional fission counter consists of a gas-filled chamber containing plates coated with a thin layer of fissionable uranium-235. When the coating is struck by a neutron, fission occurs, and the fragments from that fission ionize the gas, producing an electric charge that can be counted electronically. However, superpositions of many small alpha pulses appear as neutron pulses in conventional counters, producing interference. The resulting reduction in neutron sensitivity isn't a problem in making in-core measurements, but it is in monitoring the much smaller neutron flux outside a reactor vessel. In designing greater sensitivity into the new counter, the developers began by increasing the plate collection area. They achieved this increase by a radically different design ifemg curved or convoluted plates. Amplitude of neutron pulses was increased by use of a "fast gas" that had been developed for radiation detectors by the atomic, molecular, and high-voltage physics group in ORNL's health and safety research division. The gas, a mixture of 80% argon and 20% carbon tetrafluoride, permits extremely rapid recording of electronic pulses of very short duration. Finally, special electronics helped to enhance the counter's sensitivity. By using a technique known as time interval discrimination, which employs delay-line circuitry, the ORNL group was able to limit greatly alpha radiation interference. A neutronderived charge pulse travels in two directions along the circuit, with one part of the signal arriving nanoseconds sooner than the other. Coincidence logic is used along with conventional pulse amplitude discrimination to count neutron charges without interference. •
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2,4-Xylidine and all other isomers
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Custom made intermediates against secrecy agreement Our traditional processes: - Nitration - Catalytic hydrogenation and other reactions For catalog, samples, technical data please contact: US-Agents: Riches-Nelson, Inc. 254 Mill Street, Greenwich, Conn. 06830 Phone: 203-869-3088 Telex: 6819177 rinel uw Samples for commercial trade only Agents in other countries: Please inquire
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Sept. 6, 1982 C&EN
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