for phenol, styrène, nylon, and detergents, which are estimated as follows: Phenol Styrene Nylon Deterpcnts
Benzene Used (lb.) 235,000.000 280.000,000 125.000.000 5Q.0QO.000 690,000,000
The apparent excess of about 110 million lb. (15 million gal.) was partly, at least, taken up by exports as well as by a certain amount of stock piling. It is obvious that, with the substantial further growth in phenol and in styrene which is expected, the situation can easily become very tight. Synthetic phenol capacity is being expanded and by the end of 194S or early 1949 a production capacity of about 350 million lb. per year is indicated requiring an equal weight of benzene. Maleic anhydride is being expanded rapidly and in some quarters it is stated that this chemical will repeat the phenomenal growth of phthalic anhydride. The expectation is that the capacity available during 194S will have a requirement of 60 million lb. of benzene. Styrene plants, if run at capacity, would consume about 550 million lb. more. These three industrial chemicals alone, therefore, may
take as much as 950 million lb. of benzene per year or about 8 5 % of that available a* coke oven by-product, even with the coke oven industry operating at full capacity. In addition to the coke oven benzene, some 180 million lb. (25 million gal.) may be expected from the distillation of coal tar and water gas as well as from certain petroleum cracking operations in California. This will not be enough to balance all the other uses of benzene and leaves a definite shortage. Some relief may be had by basing nylon in part on cyclohexane from petroleum and in part on furfural. This is already being done for a portion of the intermediates required, and future expansion is likely to go along the same lines. Other uses such as detergents and some of the miscellaneous uses may turn to toluene as a base. But even these expedients will probably be inadequate after a very few years of expanding business. The only permanent solution will be to produce benzene in some other way, and petroleum cracking is the only visible economic probability. It is not as simple to make benzene in this way as it is to produce toluene and at the present benzene price
Teamwork Brings Profits A STAFF R E P O R T
iTH production costs rising meteorically and pressure being increased on American manufacturers to hold the price line, they are more than ever concerned with effecting production economies. At the recent Conference on Materials Handling in Cleveland Jan. 12 to 16, attended by 15,000 production executives and engineers and 200 manufacturers of materials handling equipment, A. E. Aukens, materials handling consultant of Bay Village, Ohio, said, "Modern materials handling methods may not be management's last defense against rising costs, but they offer one of the best and quickest means of assuring profits." Technical sessions of the conference and the national meeting of the management and materials handling sections of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers were held concurrently with the Second Annual National Materials Handling Exposition. Earl Bunting, president of O'Sullivan Rubber Corp., stated the recurring theme: "There is nothing wrong with the world's economy which productive teamwork can't cure." The function of the exposition was to help attain that teamwork by equipping industry to do a better, faster, and more productive job and to lessen drudgery. Procedures for making a materials handling survey preparatory to installing modern materials handling aids were outlined by Mr. Aukens. The first determining 240
factor is to establish the amount and nature of capital investment which management is willing to make. Other limits are seen in plant layout, status of the building program or lease arrangements, location of freight docks, elevators, sidings, furnaces, tanks, and other stationary equipment. One of the most enthusiastically received technical presentations was a paper by A. B. Cummins, chairman of the department of industrial organization and management a t Western Reserve University. To make concrete estimates of economies effected by materials handling innovations, he used a recent statistical generalization from small samples. Data were compiled on the time spent in each of 10 subdivisions of a sample work operation without the use of complete and lengthy time and motion studies. An observer made random checks through the department over a period of 20 days and found a consistent pattern. Additional checks had no effect on percentages recorded. As a final injunction he warned the assemblage to beware the old "dodge," "Our plant is different." He agreed t h a t it probably was, but added that "insolvency is made up of plants that became 'too different.' " At the exposition, the 200,000 square feet of floor space in the Cleveland auditorium housed what might well be termed overgrown gadgets. CHEMICAL
level, there is little incentive for the petroleum refiners to consider it. The best informed opinion seems to be that it will require a price level of 30 cents per gal or more to make it interesting as a venture. The near future in benzene, therefore, appears to be gradually rising prices above t h e present level of 19 cents per gal. At some point, depending on world conditions, there may be some relief by imports, but this would be only temporao' since the same general tendencies exist in all industrial countries. Sooner or later— probably sooner—benzene will pass toluene in price and will advance until it reaches a point where its synthesis by cracking petroleum is economic. The day of industrial aroniatics based •exclusively on benzene, toluene, and naphthalene as by-products of coal earbonization is growing to a close. Already toluene and naphthalene derivatives are partly based on petroleum and benzene derivatives soon will be. The future depends on petroleum raw materials and as the needs increase, this source will be expanded so that eventually it will be the principal base of these products.
The fork lift truck virtually unknown before the recent war, has achieved an almost animate facility. The various modifications displayed could lift loads up to 20 could lift them over 20 feet vertically, could turn a load over, drop it out the bottom, move in sideways, and push it back 10 feet onto a platform. Forks were on display that lifted bales by pressure on the sides, picked barrels up from the top, and picked up bricks or concrete blocks with pneumatic rubber grips. This lift truch9 made by the Totv Motor Co. 9 jpicks tlr urns up frown the top
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