The Chemical World This Week RESEARCH & TECHNOLOGY
JULY
26,
1965
CONCENTRATES
^ A patent (U.S. 3,184,899) for the use of Microballoon spheres in the separation of helium from natural gas has been issued to Dr. David Frazier, senior research associate at Standard Oil (Ohio). Use of the tiny (V200 in. diameter) hollow glass spheres to separate helium and methane is possible because of the wide difference in the relative rate of diffusion through the Microballoons. Sohio developed Microballoons of plastic in 1950 as a floating covering to prevent evaporation losses in large crude oil tanks. The new glass Microballoons recently went into production at Sohio's semicommercial plant in Cleveland. • A helium bubble chamber, the largest ever built, has been completed at Northwestern University. The chamber is 20 inches wide and has a capacity of 40 liters. The device will be placed in use this fall with the 400-m.e.v. cyclotron at the University of Chicago, and plans call for hooking it to the 12.5-b.e.v. zero gradient synchrotron at Argonne National Laboratory early next year. It will be used for a wide range of subatomic particle studies. Dr. Martin Block, chairman of Northwestern's physics department and director of the chamber project, says that the new device will be particularly useful in the study of hyperfragments and the weak decay of strange particles. ^ The Atomic Energy Commission is inviting the wood products industry to participate in a program for the evaluation of radiation processed wood-plastic materials. Under the plan, interested companies may obtain, without charge, custom processing of their wood, from which they can then fabricate samples of products for evaluation and testing. AEC has selected LockheedGeorgia (Dawsonville, Ga.) as the contractor to process the samples. The contractor will advise selected firms on the technical aspects of the process so that appropriate wood-plastic combinations can be selected which best meet the requirements of an individual product. AEC will select 50 to 100 companies to participate in the program. Test results of sample evaluations will also be turned over to the Commission. ^ Three new ethylene-vinyl acetate resins designed to be compatible with microcrystalline waxes have been developed by D u Pont. Micro-
crystalline waxes using the hot-melt Elvax 300 Series resins, Du Pont says, can withstand storage temperatures up to 170° F.-about 25 to 30° higher than paraffin waxes can take. Use of the hot-melt resins is enabling manufacturers of corrugated containers and flexible packages to enter new market areas and penetrate deeper into existing markets. For example, corrugated containers hermetically sealed with wax can now begin to compete with sealed metal containers. Also coated corrugated materials now having the moisture barrier and high environmental temperature characteristics of the new resins can increase their competition with wood as a container for fruits and vegetables. • A plating process developed by Lea-Ronal, Inc., deposits gold at the rate of one microinch per second. The Jamaica, N.Y., company says that the Aurovel HV process deposits 23.9 karat gold in any commercial thickness. Aurovel HV (for high velocity) produces a mildly acid electrolyte which makes it possible for the process to be operated at current densities of 60 amp. per square foot with more than 60% efficiency. According to the company, the process is used to gold-plate metal strip and wire used in electronics components and in jewelry. The company expects that the process will extend the applications of gold-plating because its high speed greatly lowers production time to a fraction of what had been previously required. • The possibility of producing low-boiling hydrocarbons from oil shale by a single-step process has been confirmed by exploratory research at Battelle Memorial Institute. The process, invented by Morgan G. Huntington, president of Pyrochem Corp. (Salt Lake City, Utah), is based on cocurrent contacting of preheated shale with preheated hydrogen. The shale-hydrogen stream flows to a pyrolysis section held at pressures of 300 p.s.i.g. and temperatures from 800° to 900° F. The product gas passes over a cobalt-molybdenum catalyst bed immediately above the pyrolysis zone. The product stream is then condensed, yielding a low-viscosity liquid, water-white in color, and essentially free of nitrogen and sulfur. Chromatographic analyses of the product stream at Battelle suggest that under certain conditions a material similar to gasoline in boiling range can be produced by the process. JULY
2 6, 1965
C&EN
35
