THE CHEMICAL WORLD THIS WEEK
METAL REFINING:
Electron Beam Process Air Reduction Co., Inc., has developed an electron beam refining process that gives promise of commercial production of alloy steels of unusually high purity and with many engineering properties—such as ductility, impact strength, and corrosion resistance—substantially improved over those for metal produced by conventional refining methods. The company plans to have a 30,000 ton-per-year demonstration unit, costing about $10 million, operating at the Berkeley, Calif., plant of its Temescal division by the end of the year. It has also signed an engineering agreement with Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. for a $10 million, 40,000 ton-per-year unit. According to Airco, both of these units, although small by steel industry standards, will be competitive in about a 350,000 ton-per-year market for certain grades of stainless steel. But Airco, whose basic aim is to license the process to steelmakers, says it has already engineered units with capacities up to 500,000 tons per year. The key to the Airco method, known as the combined refining process (CRP), is a continuous hearth, made of water-cooled copper, where partially refined metal is simultaneously exposed to electron beams and to a hard vacuum—1 micron or less. According to Airco, this long, shal-
low hearth exposes more metal to a hard vacuum than does any other refining method. With a greater molten metal surface exposed, a higher percentage of volatile impurities is evaporated from the metal and collected on condensate shields. Also, the electron beam heating along the hearth causes areas of superheat. These stir the metal and so increase
exposure of the impurities to the vacuum. Nonvolatile impurities are collected behind a slag barrier. This hearth is fed with its molten metal from an induction-heated crucible through a secondary refining chamber. The refined product is continuously cast, under vacuum, into either billets or slabs. The new process greatly reduces
Owens-Illinois Casts Giant Glasses for Telescopes
Refined alloy Sample from electron beam 8 C&EN JUNE 30, 1969
In less than 15 minutes, 25 tons of white-yellow molten glass at 3000° F. were poured into a mold last week to form the largest telescope mirror ever cast. (Pictured above is a smaller mirror being cooled to 1500° F. before placement in a kiln for curing and further cooling.) The 158-inch mirror, being made by Owens-Illinois in Toledo, Ohio, is the largest piece of glass cast in the Free World. Also, it is the second largest telescope mirror, exceeded only by the 200-inch one at Mt. Palomar, Calif. The 158-inch mirror is the first of three large reflecting telescope mirrors O-I will make. This one will be installed at Cerro Tololo, Chile, at 7200 ft. in the Atacama Desert in the Andes Mountains. The others are a 150-inch mirror for New South Wales, Australia, and a 144-inch one for France. The mirrors are being made of O-I's "Cer-Vit" material, a homogeneous crystalline ceramic. The material has a near-zero linear coefficient of thermal expansion.
"Mirrors made of Cer-Vit material enable astronomers to obtain better quality photographs of fine details of the sun, planets, and nebulae because of the better mirror figure," O-I's executive vice president Floyd M. Canter says. "One of the most serious problems of astronomy has been distortions in the image being viewed or photographed that are caused by changes in the mirror's shape which result from temperature changes." The mirror stability provided by our zero-expansion material also allows greater utilization of invaluable telescope time because the time now wasted in letting other types of mirrors 'catch up' with changing atmospheric conditions is saved." The three new telescopes will cost a total of $34 million, but the mirror blanks will represent less than the normal 10% of the total cost. This is partly because of the material used and partly because of the economies made possible by O-I's production of all three blanks, Mr. Canter explains.
the usual difference between the longitudinal and transverse properties found in conventional steel alloys, Airco says. This means that engineers no longer have to design to the weakest property of the metal and can specify less material for such weight-critical applications as aircraft construction. In the stainless steel area, Airco claims that it can make straight chrome stainless by its new process with the formability, ductility, and weldability of today's chrome-nickel stainless steels.
TANK CARS:
Computerized Services Two long-time competitors, General American Transportation Corp. (GATX) and Trans Union Corp., are racing to fully computerize their tank car leasing services. To the chemical industry, computerized leasing will mean better availability of tank cars and resulting cost savings. For example, delay in transporting bulk chemicals from producer to customer can mean high storage costs for the producer and costly production delays for the customer. Greater availability of tank cars will help overcome this and other leasing problems. Computers make it possible to control an entire lease-car fleet on a current-status basis, maximize service to customers, minimize lost rental revenue, and reduce maintenance expenses, GATX vice president James H. Goodman says. GATX's tank car fleet totals about 55,000 cars, the largest in the U.S. The company's computer system, just installed, provides almost instant answers to almost any kind of lease-car status inquiry,
he explains. Answers can be obtained on such things as availability, location and destination of cars, repair-shop status, and such minor items as the date of a car's last paint job. Also, the computer keeps track of the car's mileage for billing purposes. One of the biggest problems in tank car leasing is maintenance. GATX's IBM 360/40 at company headquarters in Chicago greatly reduces the out-ofservice time that maintenance requires and loss of rental revenue to the company. The computer not only calculates a priority schedule for repair shops, but also sends the shop a complete meehanical profile of the car. This type of fully current car status report that the computer provides was simply not possible via manual record keeping, Mr. Goodman says. Also headquartered in Chicago is the nation's second largest tank car lessor—Trans Union (until recently named Union Tank Car Corp.). Union has a fleet of about 52,000 tank cars. The company is putting together a completely integrated management information system served by an IBM 360/40. At present, the firm uses a Model 30 computer for fleet management. This summer Union is integrating its tank car production into the system. Inventory control and production scheduling of these newly expanded facilities is the aim here, tank car division vice president Robert D. McEvers explains. Also being implemented is a system of computer control of Union's tank car repair shops. This will keep maintenance scheduling in line with customer needs, Mr. McEvers says. The third phase of Union's computer information system will include processing of accounting, personnel, and marketing data. This phase of Union's system should be operational by the end of this year.
POLLUTION:
S02 Sensing Stations
GATX's Goodman Controlling entire fleet
The Netherlands government plans to build a system of "sensing" stations to continuously monitor sulfur dioxide concentrations across the nation. The system will warn local industries that a potentially dangerous level of concentration exists. This modern sequel to a watch on the dikes will be constructed in stages. Thirty-one monitors will be installed this year in the highly populated and industrial area between Rotterdam and the North Sea. The system may find application in the U.S. George Crosby, president of Philips Electronic Instruments, Mount Vernon, N.Y., told the 62nd annual
Philips S0 2 detector Looking into "sensing"
meeting of the Air Pollution Control Association that his firm will offer the system or parts of it to municipal and industrial installations in the U.S. Dr. S. Michael de Veer of Philips Gloeilampenfabrieken, Eindhoven, Netherlands, told the APCA meeting that the sulfur monitor developed by his labs cannot be confused by other airborne contaminants and needs little or no on-site maintenance or calibration. Philips Electronic Instruments has cross-licensing agreements with the Dutch firm. The Dutch monitor is based on continuous coulometric titration. An air sample, after filtration and scrubbing with activated charcoal to remove all pollutants except sulfur dioxide, is bubbled through a solution of sulfuric acid, potassium bromide, and bromine. The sulfur dioxide reacts with bromine and as the concentration of bromine drops, a feedback system regenerates bromine by electrolysis at a generator electrode. The generator current is recorded as a concentration of sulfur dioxide in the air. One p.p.m. in air may be a dangerous concentration of sulfur dioxide. In operation, the Dutch system transmits from the monitoring stations information on sulfur dioxide levels along with wind velocity and direction. This information is transmitted via telephone lines to a computer. The computer is programed to analyze these factors and compare them with a mathematical atmospheric model. Whenever the sulfur dioxide content rises above a preset level, the computer triggers an internal alert. If the local weather bureau predicts that existing weather conditions will remain in effect for at least six hours, messages to curtail operations are radioed to industries along the network. JUNE 30f 1969 C&EN 9
