THE CHEMICAL WORLD THIS WEEK
Cottonseed Extraction Plant Lubbock Cotton Oil Co.'s plant for the solvent extraction of prepressed cotton seed cake was designed and built b y Blaw-Knox (C&EN, Aug. 1 1 , page 3306). It is processing in excess of its nominal capacity of 2 0 0 tons of s e e d per day. The plant extracts coarsely ground cake to produce a bright granular meal with a re sidual oil content maintained well under t h e guaranteed maximum of 0.5% · T h e plant proper stands on a slab 5 0 b y 40 feet and is not housed. I t is 4 5 feet! h i g h
Houston, Tex., to facilitate its gas supply activities. Houston was elected for loca tion of the office because many of the companies with which Texas Gas deals on gas supply matters have offices there. Stainless and Steel Products Co.. 100O Berry Ave., St. Paul, Minn., has made ar rangements for the exclusive manufacture and sale of the Access-A-Bilt fermentor originally designed by the Bristol Lahoratories, Inc., of Syracuse, Ν . Υ. The addition of the Access-A-Bilt fermentor to its line of certified vat fermentors places S&SP in position to equip laboratories, universities, research founda tions, and industry with research, pilot plant, and production fermentors with practically any desired features. This fermentor is designed to eliminate the problems involved which result from attaching the agitator shaft and service connections to the top or lid of fermentors. It maintains constant agitation rates, per mits precise addition of antifoam, and lessens danger of contamination. Matheson Co., Inc., East Rutherford, N. J., has purchased all the outstanding capital stock of the Coleman & Bell Co., Norwood, Ohio. Since 1925 Coleman & Bell lias pro duced and distributed reagent inorganic and organic chemicals manufactured ac cording to ACS specifications, together with a complete line of chemical indica tors, biological stains, and reagents in solution. Coleman cV Bell will continue· operations under the name of Matheson, Coleman and Bell, Inc. Eventually the laboratories and chemical personnel of Matheson, now l o . rated at East Rutherford, will In* trans ferred to Norwood and combined with Coleman & Bell Laboratories.
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Delanlum Carbon Corp., a corporation jointly owned by Great Lakes Carbon Corp. and Powell Duffryn Carbon Prod ucts, Ltd., went into production at its n e w factory at Morton Grove, 111., around the middle of the month. T h e plant will pro duce Delanium graphite cubic heat ex changers. Later the plant Avili produce Paragrid absorption and scrubbing towers and other graphite products for the chemi cal, metallurgical, and process industries. Equipment & Controls Engineers, Inc., is the name of a new engineering organiza tion specializing in t h e designing and building o f complete coordinated process controls. T h e firm is located at 814 Noblestown Road, Pittsburgh 5 , Pa. Pacific Coast Borax Co., division of Borax Consolidated, Ltd., announces that henceforth their operations in t h e agri cultural and related fields would function in two divisions with new names. Re search, development, and sales in the field of crop production, and plant nutri ents will henceforth operate under the Plant F o o d Division. The division operating in t h e weed con trol field will henceforth he known as the Agricultural Sales Division. In addition to weed control work, this division will also be responsible for boron deficiency work in the eleven western states. Humble Oil & Refining Co. lias awarded the M. \ V . Kellogg C o . the contract for the design nnd construction of a solvent dcnsphalting plant at its Dnytowu (Texas) refinery. Said to have twice the capacity of any deasphalter heretofore designed, the plant will charge 28,000 barrels per tlay of vacuum reduced crude, providing additional clean feed stock for two re cently enlarged fluid catalytic crackers at Dnytown. Erection of the deasphalter will
CHEMICAL
start as early in 1953 as materials pro curement will permit. Naugatuck Chemical Division, U. S. Rubber Co., is doubling the production capacity of its Marvinol vinyl resin plant in Painesville, Ohio. The expansion program, which is ex pected to be completed by June 1953, will lift production to more than 5 0 million pounds annually. Standard Oil Co. of Texas recently completed a $10 million refinery expan sion program at the company's plant at El Paso, Tex. The new facilities include a synthetic crude unit and a Houdriflow catalyticcracking unit, each rated at 11,500 bar rels per day and designed for equal quan tities of fresh feed and recycle charge. Other major units include a 7555 barrelper-day vacuum flash unit, a gas recovery plant and an alleviation plant capable of producing 1400 barrels of 1 0 0 / 1 3 0 octane aviation gasoline daily. Catalytic Construction Co. of Philadel phia engineered and constructed the plant within a schedule which allowed 16 months from the signing of the contract for engineering, procurement and con struction. Work in the field consumed only 12 months. The project was completed five days ahead of the projected schedule and within 2 % of the estimated cost. ΕΙ-Tronîcs, Inc., designers and manufacturers of v nucleonic and electronic instruments, has expanded its research and industrial facilities by the acquisition of an additional 17,000 square feet of space in new quarters. Offices, and research and engineering are now located at Fifth and Noble Sts., Philadelphia. Plant facilities at 2647 North Howard St. will be devoted to production manufacturing operations.
W o r l d - W i d e Patent Pool For C l a d Metals The creation of a world-wide pool of patents and know-how applicable to the production of clad metals and equipment was the aim of negotiations carried on in Germany recently by Alfred P. Knapp, president of Knapp Mills. On his icturn to this country, Mr. Knapp said that his company is offering to Americanize European production of clad metals and equipment by patents and processes the firm has invented or acquired. Mr. Knapp stated that in exchange, his company would acquire from the respective European countries those patents and processes which would h e of interest to the industries of the free world. In this way a pool of the most advanced technical procedures in the clad metals industry would be created. Such patents would apply to the chemical, process, nuclear, petrochemical, oil refining, and metallurgical industries. While in Germany, Mr. Knapp reached agreement whereby a group
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S a l t evaporating p a n hood a n d stack o f corrosion-resisting M o n e l . Fabricated by the Brown-Hutchinson Iron Works of Detroit, Michigan, of 26-gauge Monel sheet, Ι ό - g a u g e ribs a n d le" χ 1 " χ 1 " angle sup ports, it is 16' high b y 4 4 ' wide o v e r a l l . . . AAonel throughout.
Protecting product purity with MONEL Is corrosion putting the bite on your equipment? Is it endangering your product purity? Then you'll be interested in this experience of a large midwestern company. Producing highly refined salt for the food proc essing industry., they needed a special material for new brine evaporating pan hoods. They needed a material that was highly resist ant to corrosion.,, because... corrosive salt vapors condensing on a non-resistant hood would carry heavy metal impurities back into the slurry, thus contaminating the salt. And they needed a material that had special fabrication features. It had to have the same high corrosion resistance in weld areas as in the sheet itself.
These requirements, plus their experience with Monel® in heat exchangers, dryers, and conveyors, led them to select Monel again. They now have four hood assemblies in use, giving excellent service in the production of a high quality salt thanks to Monel. So, if you are bothered by corrosion or have diffi culty maintaining purity of product, perhaps Monel offers you a solution, too. Consult our tech nical staff. They will be glad to help you. Just write giving full details. Remember, however, that because I^ickel and Nickel Alloys like Monel are on extended delivery, it will pay you to anticipate your needs. Order well in advance giving necessary NPA rating and com plete end-use information.
THE INTERNATIONAL NICKEL COMPANY, INC. 67 Wall Street, New York 5, Ν. Υ. MONEl» · "R"® MONEl · "K"® MONEl · "KIT® MONEl · "S"S MONE1 NICKEl · LOW CARBON NICKEL · DURANICKEl® INCONEl® · INCONEL "Χ"Φ · INCOLOY® · NIMONICS
VOLUME
3 0. N O .
4 6 . NOVEMBER
17,
1952
Nickel j f o > A||0y, 4843
THE CHEMICAL WORLD THIS WEEK of six American processes will b e ex changed for t w o German processes. Knapp said that the next country with which negotiations will b e undertaken is England, and after that Canada and Aus tralia.
SCIENCE
AZEOTROPIC
DATA
C a p t a n Becomes Common Name f o r Insecticide T h e term captan has been selected as a coined name for the fungicide N-trichloroinethylthiotetrahydrophthalimide b y the Interdepartmental Committee o n Pest Con trol (Departments of Agriculture, Interior, Defense, and Federal Security A g e n c y ) . The name has been approved by the American Phytopathological Society and the
AMERICAN*
CHEMICAL
SOCIETY
is
agreeable to its use. Captan formerly was designated as S R - 4 0 6 and Orthocide. California Spray-Chemical Corp. is in the process of having captan registered as a trademark in the United States and for eign countries However, t h e company has taken steps to transfer the name from the list where it was registered for appli cation as a trademark t o a supplementary list. The name captan is therefore avail able for use as a common name for desig nating the chemical. ICPC states that the name applies t o the pure chemical, and a technical grade should indicate the per centage of captan present.
containing... θ 247- page table of binary systems % 17-page table of ternary systems Θ 41-page formula index β
107 charts
32$ fiancé, - ct*t& éctuuC ΟηΚτ from: SPECIAL PL'IIUCATIONS DEPARTMENT
AMERICAN rilEMICAL SOCIETY 1155 SIXTEENTH STKECT, N. W, WASIII.N'tiTON 6. D . C,
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Codeposited Impurities Affect Nickel Coating Characteristics On the basis of the data obtained in an investigation at National Bureau of Standards, it appears that the widely vary ing properties shown b y electrodeposited nickel are determined primarily by the chemical and physical nature of codeposited impurities—usually small quanti ties of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, or other elements present in small fractions of a percent. This is shown not only by the parallel trend in the variation of many of the properties, indicating a common basic cause, but also in correlations found between properties arid crystal or microstructure and in the dependence of the properties on hath composition. Because large changes in the deposits result from t h e presence of certain types of ions or minute amounts of special addi tions t o the plating bath, NHS states that it is reasonable to assume that the char acter of the deposits is caused by the loclcposition of various kinds of foreign matter which may vary in quantity as well as in effectiveness. Codeposited material may sometimes influence the properties of the deposit directly; in other eases, it may result in a fine-grained structure, perhaps with lattice distortion and internal stresses, whleh in turn affects the physical and mechanical properties of the deposits. In general, it would appear that sub
CHEMICAL
stances present in the plating solution affect the properties of the electrodeposit only to the extent that they influence the codeposition of foreign material. Thus, differences in the properties of brightnickel and Watts-nickel deposits can be ascribed to impurities in the bright nickel derived from the organic additives used to produce t h e brightening. NBS analysis of the bright-nickel deposits showed that they contained carbon and sulfur inclu sions totalling about 0.1%, whereas the Watts-nickel deposits did not contain these impurities. On the other hand, some variations in the mechanical properties of the Watts-nickel deposits can be attributed to the presence of small amounts of oxide. Impure Industrial Coatings. It thus becomes apparent that those electrode posited coatings that are of value in in dustry are not pure coatings, says NBS. Instead, they o w e their valuable proper ties to the presence of small amounts of impurities. The smooth, thick electrodeposits used by the plating industry are actually exceptional inasmuch as the pure metals would be deposited as a mass of large crystals rather than a coherent layer. T h e mechanism by which foreign mate rial is codeposited w i t h nickel is a matter of speculation, but the NBS study indi cates that it is probably an adsorption phenomenon rather than an electrochemi cal one, as has sometimes been postulated. The adsorption hypothesis is sufficiently versatile to explain t h e very specific effects of certain additives and the influence of the anion of a plating solution o n the nature of the deposit. Some substances, instead of being directly adsorbed, may so modify t h e p H of the cathode film that basic compounds are codeposited with the metal. T h e investigation of electrodeposited nickel was conducted b y Victor Zentner, Abner Brenner, and Charles Jennings of the NBS staff. T h e work was sponsored by the American Electroplaters* Society.
NBS Finds B e t t e r C a t a l y s t For C a s t i n g Resin T h e National Bureau of Standards has continued its investigation of polymeriza tion systems for use with the recentlydeveloped NBS AN-5 casting resin (C&EN, Sept. 8, p a g e 3 7 3 2 ) . N B S re search n o w indicates that cumene hydro peroxide is a more desirable catalyst than the combination of Pro-A ( a 10% solu tion of N-/9-hydroxyethyl-l,2,3,4-tetrahydroquinoline in hydrogenated terphenyl) and benzoyl peroxide. Although curing time is somewhat longer—about one day at 50° C—cumene hydroperoxide has the advantage of giving a more complete cure and has no tendency to cause corrosion, Ν US states. From 0.1 to 0.8 gram of cumene hydroperoxide catalyst is added to each 100 grams of the liquid resin just before it is to be used. Optimum proportion depends on the size of the casting.
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