ACTION ON THE AMERICAN
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"BUTADIENE BOULEVARD" A t eÂe fefc. "Main Street" in the Nation's butadiene program. Here butadiene is re· covered from the mixed hydrocarbon gas as if comes from (he dehydrogenator where rt-butyfenes were converted to butadiene, in these columns butadiene is recovered from a stream containing 20 per cent and purified to a point where the finished materials wit! have a concentration of a little more than 98.5 per cent. The butylène that is recovered here will be recycled through catalytic reacton t o form more butadiene.
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Heches Butadiene Unit Opened By F. J. V A N ANTWERPEN, Associate Editor / " ^ N A soggy piece of Texas prairie Ameri^ • ^ can engineers have erected a technical colossus—a testimony to m a n ' s sheer determination to conquer his enemies, whether human or natural. T h e human enemies are the Axis powers, t h e natural enemies were swamp, flood, insects, and gravity, and the colossus is t h e Neches Butane Products Co. at Port Neches, Texas. Out of this plant will come some 100,000 short tons of butadiene p e r year equivalent to one seventh of t h a t necessary for our rubber program. Into the plant went the engineering a n d construction genius of a nation of builders, and a t times, in t h e face of obstacles raised by t h e perversities of m e n and Nature, t h a t determined genius seemed slated to fail. B u t today one half of the immense Neches plant has been
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formally dedicated, and the other half is η earing completion. Like most of the famous yarns of achievement, the exciting story of t h e Neches, which is the largest plant of its kind in t h e world, is n o t so much in what CHEMICAL
is being produced, but it is in the building, t h e accomplishing. The site o f the plant was n o t chosen on the basis of t h e building location, but because it was conveniently near the plants of the five petroleum companies t h a t organized to form Neches. Preliminary surveys were carried out on horseback because of the imud, and this means of traveling was continued long into t h e construction period. Tremendous amounts of earth had t o be carted to make the ground passable. A spring flood in 1943 transformed the already soggy landscape into a shallow sea,, and for weeks afterward t h e ground was squidgy mucilage, preventing efficient construction. T h e flood brought problems besides t h a t of ooze. Labor living quarters were flooded a t t h e same time, a n d there w a s a general decamping of t h e
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men for drier and higher sections of the country. Located near P o r t Neches, a town with a normal population of 2,500, the construction force of 6,000, imported mostly from the Southwest, brought with them critical problems in housing, health, and food. T h e Defense Plant Corporation built about 900 temporary buildings for the workmen, and this settlement promptly earned the name of Camp Neches. But these houses proved insufficient, especially when 2,000 more workers for the two adjacent copolymer plants descended on the neighborhood. Six hundred trailers were exported from the North into the section and were set u p in a large camp. These were augmented by the hundreds of privately owned trailers brought by arriving workers. Recognizing the threat of epidemics, the U. S. Public Health Service sponsored and carried out the inoculation of the citizens of these newly created, mushrooming settlements. Drinking water facilities and sewage disposal systems were enlarged. A public health center was completed to care for the health of the group. The idea of constructing such a plant was conceived by Herbert Henderson, vice president of Gulf Oil Corp., while on a visit to Washington to discuss the production of butadiene from petroleum. He interested four other companies beside his own— namely, the Atlantic Refining Co., the Pure Oil Co., the Texas Co., and the Socony-Vacuum Oil Co. None of them had experience in the manufacture of butadiene, but there were other organizations t h a t had, and arrangements were made for reviewing information on all available processes.
Thorough s t u d y convinced a committee representing the management of the five corporations t h a t such a venture was feasible. This decision was reached March 20, 1942. T h e Neches Butane Products Co. was organized, and one of the toughest production problems ever undertaken by t h e oil industry was under way. Into the rapidly expanding enterprise was called the Lummus Co.—petroleum plant engineers and contractors with a solid reputation for building petroleum refining units. Facing the companies were some uncompromising facts: N e v e r had butadiene been made on such, a scale, t h e process had to b e engineered w i t h o u t delay, the maxim u m quantity of butadiene must be attained per barrel of petroleum with the minimum of waste, results must be obtained quickly, and there were national shortages of labor, materials, and transportation equipment. B u t the combined resources of the oil industry, via pilot plants and experimental tests, soon settled the question of which process to use. T h e Defense Plant Corporation awarded t h e contract on May 26,* 1942. I n June 1942 construction started. Problems multiplied with progress. Drainage canals had to be built to rid the area of water. Solid supports were needed for the massive distillation towers—some 175 feet tall and 14 feet in diameter. Test cores failed to show a solid rock foundation, for the land was marshy and unsuited to support the weight of such superfractionators. T h e supports had to be made b y sinking concrete piling 40 feet into the muck. In addition to these pilings, thousands of such foundations had
Canals had to be dredged to siphon the water from marshes and tlie muck cleared from the ditches with draglines before construction of the plant for the Neches Butane Products Co. could be started. V O L U M E
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to be made for the storage spheres, steam plant, and pumping stations. All in all, 11,830 concrete shafts were set. Sometimes it was impossible to t r a n s port timber by truck t o the building location, and t h e lumber h a d to be floated i n through t h e drainage canals. For cooling water, a mile-long covered aqueduct was built from a pumping s t a tion on t h e Neches River to the plant. Water flow is regulated by remote control from a panel board in the plant, a n d blades on t h e intaJ . p u m p s are feathered a n d change pitch in response to t h e d e mand. T o return the water to the river, some 308,000,000 gallons per day, an outfall canal several miles long was dredged. T h e evolution of t h e plant caused enormous difficulties. After t h e plans a n d operation were agreed upon, it was found t h a t facilities for building t h e towers were not available—every company ordinarily engaged in such work was too completely occupied with .other war orders to accept additional loads. Further, even if t h e vessels were m a d e b y the usual fabricators, transportation means for getting t h e towers to the plant location were pitifully inadequate. • Consequently the management decided t o erect its own tower shop. Engineers rounded up plate-forming rolls, hydraulic presses, automatic welding equipment, and hatched a complete pressure still manufacturing unit. T h e constructors were fortunate in o b taining the new type seam welders, but a t the same time this posed another problem, for on the marshy soils a building 900 feet long had to be built with no variation in level; otherwise the welding equipment would produce welds which were too thick.
Umber and material for the first buildings could not be brought to the property because of mud and lack of roads, so it was dumped into a drainage canal and floated 1 mile to the building site.
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Leffc. Excavation i$ begun for the hug© fractionating towers. workers wear boots on .account of the wet and soggy ground.
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T h e liquefied g a s is stored in Hortondptteres a t 75 psi, which is its vapor press u r e at 130° F . — a temperature which represents e x t r e m e summer conditions. T h e Hortonsphere farm a t Neehes, containing 42 t a n k s , is t h e largest collection of these storage vessels in the world. From storage t h e gas is brought t o the butylene concentration section, known as group I I . By fractionation in eight towers, including some with 120 decks, the isobut a n e and isobutylene are separated from t h e normal b u t a n e a n d normal butylenes a n d the Iso c o m p o u n d s are sent back t o the refineries to m a k e aviation gasoline.
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C&m&lytic Dehydrogenation T h e ri^-butylenes or butenes, which were obtained from t h e B-B feed and stored, a r e then sent t h r o u g h three double-pass heaters. CONTINUED ON PAGE 3 9 8
To save time, the towers were built in one piece and weldeQ on cradles arranged on railroad car trucks. F r o m the shop they were hauled by t h e one-locomotive railroad t o butadiene alley. Tremendous derricks were employed to raise the huge towers to their concrete foundations. Neehes Butane Products is divided into two units—one the mirror image of the other. T h e north unit is now operating, while t h e south unit is expected to b e on stream b y late spring. Twenty-seven towers a r e in the north group, and 21 in the south. T h e r e is more equipment in the north production area, as it contains the solvent purification buildings and this was n o t duplicated in t h e s o u t h end of the plant.
iSOBUTANE^*to r a f in®ry i | k
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DEHYDROGENAXION AREA
Storage
Production of Butadiene Isolation of n-butylenes
T h e B-B supply (butylene-butane) is forwarded via pipe line t o t h e Neehes plant from t h e petroleum refineries which tower over t h e Texas plains in t h a t area.
I fabricating plant is built to make the many towers 318
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Dredges cut huge canals as shown above to transport ihz cooling water from the Neches River to the plant, and then it is carried back again through the outfall canal after the water has served Its purpose.
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In the summer of ' 4 3 , the heavy rains flooded the plant and flooded Camp Neches, the living quarters for the construction crews, and seriously damaged the very expensive precision equipment that had already been installed.
Steam for processing is generated at the plant.
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Hundreds of pumps are to be used for pumping the cooling water
Water is obtained at the river pumping station.
Neches Butadiene Unit O p e n e d ( C O N T I N U E D FROM PAGE 3 1 8 ) PRORtNE LEAN OIL
to fuo! PROFANE
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B-BU1TANE BUTADIENE
TO MISS THE CLEVELAND EMPLOYMENT EARING HOUSE
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Last September at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 2,809 interviews were completed in 4 days. EMPLOYERS needing chemists and chemical engineers CHEMISTS ENGINEERS employers
and CHEMICAL wishing to contact
Should Plan to be Present ! Nowhere else will employers find so large a group of persons with diversified training and experience. Nowhere else will candidates for employment find such varied oppor tunities — academic, governmental, and industrial. For further details and restric tions on its use, see Chemical and Engineering News, this issue, page 344.
Can You Afford
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->-cas pLain has a tremendous appetite. It~s operating force must marshall a wide variety of raw materials through t h e complicated processing facilities before butadiene p»uts in its appearance. The pla.nt,oi3 continuous operation, with three 8-hoi_a.r shifts of men, has a capacity of ΙΟΟ,ΟΟΟΐ annixsl tons of butadiene, which should, with proper processing, yield 120,000 tons of Bmina S. In turn, t h e Armed Forcesarm.d the essen tial drivers of t h e N a t i o n sfcsould xeaiize some 28,000,000 tires from tliis a m o u n t of synthetic rubber.
Deferment of Professionally Trained M e n I n e s t i m a b l e d a m a g e will b e d o n e t o t h e w a r i n d u s t r i e s if professionally trained y o u n g m e n in critical occupations, s u c h a s c h e m i s t r y , engineering, a n d physics, a r e d r a f t e d i n t o t h e A r m y as p l a n n e d b y a n e w Selective Service ruling, according t o A . B . N e w m a n , c h a i r m a n of t h e M a n p o w e r C o m m i t t e e of t h e A m e r i c a n I n s t i t u t e of C h e m i c a l E n g i n e e r s a n d d e a n of engineering of t h e College of t h e C i t y of N e w York. H i s re m a r k s w e r e directed a t Local Board M e m o r a n d u m 115 w h i c h b e c a m e effective F e b . 1 and which, he s t a t e d , " p r o h i b i t s t h e defer m e n t of m e n b e t w e e n t h e a g e s of 18 a n d 22. except u n d e r very special c o n s i d e r a t i o n , a n d which r e m o v e s discretion o n i n d u s t r i a l d e f e r m e n t s from t h e local b o a r d " . He said : Thia group, totaling about 15,000, contains substantially all t h e men who have come out of college in t h e most recent graduating classes. These men are contributing an important part to our war production and to t h e development of new weapons of war. * * * This is a technical war, and if we are to go ahead of our enemy in
C H E M I C A L
technical developments, wo muet Hkeep & steady stream of engineers flowing into o u r industries. Contrary to opinions expressed i n some quar ters there has been no inflation in. enrollment in engineering colleges. * * * \n Octobe-r 1939 engineering enrollment was 46,000 while" today there are only 18,000 stuetea-ts in civilian status. We started this war with a shortage of technical men; the enrollment in colleges fcaas dec-reased; why should we further weaken ourael-ves by drafting much-needed persoinael?
Willard Gibbs Medal Jury The
Chicago
Section o f th«*e A M E R I C A N
C H E M I C A L S O C I E T Y r e c e n t l y anuiouae^ed
the
election of new Willard Git>b3 J u r o r s : Roger A d a m s , U n i v e r s i t y of Illinois, or-ganieς S. D . K i r k p a t r i c k , Chemical and JWelall^urgical Engineering, chemical engineering; Linus P a u l i n g , California I n s t i t u t e of Technology· p h y s i c a l ; E d w a r d D o i s y . St. L o u i s U n i versity, biochemical.
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NEWS
