Research Triangle Grows $ 2 . 5 million polymer r e search center d o n a t e d by Dreyfus Foundation X HREE YKARS ago, t h e North Carolina
Research Triangle, an area bounded by Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, was an idea. It's more today. Being de veloped with government and private aid, it's plucking feathers for its cap. Latest addition to t h e c a p : an inter national center for polymer chemistry research. North Carolina's Cov. Luther H. Hodges announced last week that the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Founda tion has granted $2.0 million to build and run the center. A S7()(),0()() lab will start going up next summer. It will be a part of the Research Triangle Institute. . The center, to b e known as the Camille Dreyfus Laboratory of Polymer Chemistry, gets its name from the founder and first president of Cclanesc Corp. of America. It will sit on the 200-acre campus of the Triangle Insti tute, in a park set aside for research. Studies will include the chemistry and physics of polymers (including cellu lose) and their derivatives. George R. Herbert, president of the Triangle Institute a n d formerly of the Stanford Research Institute, says the 2(),()()()-square foot lab will be big enough to do some applied research. Money should come from government and industrial contracts. Mr. Herbert will appoint a polymer scientist to plan and direct the lab's program. H e will also appoint others of the staff. T h e Dreyfus Foundation will help select them. Mr. Herbert says he hopes to create a scientific advisory committee for the center. • More t o Come. Other new s point ing to the triangle's ρ ' " ^\ power came last spring. Chemsti aid >«,Λ» ' would build a multimillion-dollar reseai Uih there (C&EN, June S, page 2 8 ) . Tt broke ground about a month ago, pkn to move all basic research in fibers from Decatur, Ala. Astra, which researches and designs nuclear reactors, has moved to Raleigh and will probably go to the triangle park. Ecsco Engineering hopes to have limited operations in Durham, then may move to the park. Ec:;co docs research on missiles.
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but they will form a 50-50 joint company to coordinate manufacturing, research, a n d expansion programs in chemicals. This company will progressively take over all the chemical interests of the two parents. Other interests, sue!* as Pechiney's aluminum and Saint-Gobaiii's glass manufacturing—which f o r m big parts of the companies' business—will not be included. Undoubtedly, t h e Common Market agreement has been a big factor in this combination. T h e r e is considerably less concentration in the French chemical industry than in the other major countries in Europe. French chemical output is afcout three quarters that of Germany or of the U. K. However, in t h e U. K., Imperial Chemical industries has somewhere between 35 and 507^ of the country's chemical business, a n d in Germany the Big Three—BASF, Bayer, and Hoechst— have about 25Vr among them. In France, however, it probably takes the combined output o£ the 10 top companies together to make up 25Vf of total chemical salesWith the b r e a k i n g clown of the tariff barriers inside the Common Market, the French companies would have had difficulty holding -their own against such giants as the Cerman Big Three or Italy's Montecatini, which has an eVen larger proportion of the chemical business in Italy thaxi ICI does in Great Britain. It is difficult to g e t a true picture of the size of French chemical companies because their published sales figures may not include those of subsidiaries or jointly held companies. "Pies"— joint companies in xvhicri a n u m b e r of firms own a slice—are very popular in the French c h e m i c a l industry, and have been one way of overcoming the disadvantages of the excessive fragmentation of the industry. Capital is short in France, and one company often does not have the resources t o invest in an economical size p l a n t for a new product. Or, if it does, i t would have to put too great a proportion of its capital into a single project. "Pies'" allow French companies to enter new fields and still diversify on a l i m i t e d amount of capital. Taking into account t h e difficulty in determining the exiact size of French 30
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companies, a good estimate is that the Pechiney-Saint-Gobain chemical combination will be roughly as big as, if not bigger than, Rhone-Poulenc, which has been the largest French chemical company heretofore. The new combination will produce a wide range of chemicals, plastics, and fertilizers. Companies partly held by the two parent companies will probably not be affected—among them Shell-SaintGobain and Xaphthachimie (Pechiney and British Petroleum).
• W . R. Grace's D e w e y and Almy Chemical division sells vinyl welting m a n u f a c t u r i n g assets ( t h e Styiewelt l i n e ) to W a l t e r L. Johnson, Inc., a
wholly owned subsidiary of EndicottJohnson. Dewey and Almy's Polyfibron division is concentrating on polymer-fiber combinations and ft^els that vinyl welting is foreign to that field. • Atomic Energy Commission gives Martin Co/s nuclear division a
$838,163 contract to develop a liquid fluidized bed reactor system that could lead to complete elimination of the need for control rods and the complex actuating equipment associated with the rods. AEC also assigns responsibility to provide for the processing of spent nuclear fuel elements from privately and publicly owned reactors to the Hanford, Oak Ridge, Savannah River, and Idaho Operations Offices. These offices are now ready to negotiate contracts with nuclear reactor operators to provide for the services. • Metal & Thermit sets u p a new international division to consolidate operations and sales in foreign countries. It also will handle licensing and patent agreements, and will provide liaison with M&T foreign subsidiaries and affiliates. M&T also is building a plant in Monterrey, Mexico, to make ceramic chemicals. It will be operated by a new subsidiary—Industrias M&T d e Mexico—owned jointly by M&T and a group of Mexican industrialists. • California Research Corp., a subsidiary of S t a n d a r d Oil (Calif.), puts its Isocracking process on a commercial basis, will license it to t h e petroleum industry. The process, which has been in full-scale operation at Standard's Richmond, Calif., refinery this past year, enables petroleum distillates to
be hydrocracked a t low temperature and relatively low pressure. • Collier Carbon a n d Chemical, a subsidiary of Union O i l , expects to exercise its option on 314 acres in Contra Costa County (in the S a n Francisco Bay area, near Union's O l e u m refinery) if the area is rezoned from agricultural to heavy industrial.
New Facilities · · · • Dow Chemical will build a new plant to make styrene-tnitadiene latexes at Allyn's Point, Conn. Production is scheduled for early 1961. Dow also will expand the styrene-butadiene latex capacity of its Texas division at Freeport, Tex. • Union Carbide will build a largescale plant at Institute, W. Va., to make its Sevin c a r b a m a t e insecticide. ( Sevin is now produced i n temporary facilities at Institute. ) Target date for completion: next fall. • T i d e w a t e r Oil is building a $1.5 million natural gasoline plant in the Hollywood H o u m a fields area in Louisiana. The plant will process 75 million cubic feet per day of separator residue gas produced from t h e Southdown, K r u m b haar, and G a i d r y formations in t h e Hollywood and H o u m a fields. Liquid recovery is calculated to b e 1030 barrels per day of p r o p a n e , butanes, a n d natural gasoline. T h e plant is to b e completed by the t h i r d quarter of 1960. O. L. Olsen Co. of Houston, Tex., is the contractor. • P e n n s a l t Chemicals will complete t h e first phase of a $ 6 million modernization program at i t s Wyandotte, Mich., chlorine-caustic soda plant before t h e end of this year. T h e first phase includes new 507r caustic soda evaporating facilities. • Borden Chemical will build a combined resins and formaldehyde plant in the San Francisco Bay area. Construction is scheduled to begin by t h e end of the year. T h e resin plant h a s been designed to produce 50 million pounds per year of thermosetting resins and thermoplastic emulsions. The formaldehyde p l a n t will have a 4 5 million pound-per-year capacity. • Dow Chemical's Ludington division
will build a n o t h e r lime kiln at its Ludington, Mich., lime-making facilities. Designed to make about 600 tons
of lime a day, the kiln will almost double the plant's present capacity. Allis-Chalmers Mfg. of Milwaukee will d o the construction. • Food MacHinery a n d Chemical starts a major expansion of its elemental phosphorus capacity at Pocatello, Idaho. Work should be completed by t h e e n d of next year. Present capacity a t Pocatello is 120 million pounds a year. • St. Regis P a p e r plans to more than double the capacity of its kraft pulp a n d paper mill at Tacoma, Wash. A second paper m a c h i n e with an initial capacity of 400 tons a day of kraft paper and b o a r d is being installed; the pulp mill also will b e expanded. T h e program, scheduled for completion in 1961, will cost $28.5 million. • American Chemical buys a packaged low-temperature gas separation plant from l'Air Liquide, a manufacturing affiliate of C a n a d i a n Liquid Air, Ltd. Designed a n d built in Montreal, Que., the plant will b e set u p at American Chemical's chlorinated hydrocarbon plant now being built at Alhambra, Calif. • Coôk Bcs**eries, a subsidiary of Telecomputing Corp., has a new manufacturing facility a n d supporting control l a b for special processing of silver oxide chemicals. T h e Denver, Colo., plant will boost Cook's production of electrochemical powerpacks for missiles and space craft. • Minneapolis-Honeywell
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will complete a 12,000 square-foot addition toits Golden Valley, Minn., plant this month to house production of precision ceramics for military a n d industrial uses. T h e company also plans to build a million-dollar structure at Riviera Beach, Fla., north of West Palm Beach. T h e one-story building will b e a research and development center for the firm's semiconductor products division. • Thiokol C h e m i c a l ' s Reaction Motors division formally opens its new manufacturing facilities a t Bristol, Pa. The plant makes p r e p a c k a g e d liquid propellant engines for rockets and missiles, which include the Navy's Sparrow III and Bullpup guided missiles. • Union C a r b i d e ' s Linde division dedicates its 3O0 ton-per-day oxygen-nitrogen plant a t Pittsburg, Calif.
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