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IIEC DECEMBER 1958
Grignard reagents are mightly useful tools. How much do you know about them as articles of commerce? Most of the manufacture is captive, but outside manufacture and sales to companies which use Grignards in various processes are a rapidly growing business. Arapahoe Chemicals, Inc., is at the 100,000-pound-per-year level, with markets on the rise; its manufacturing story is told in detail in the StaffIndustry Report on page 1712. Incidentally, this represents the success story of two bfothers who decided where they most wanted to live and work and then went into business.
Nuclear technology is scattered in respectable hunks all over this issue. This is nothing new, because I/EC has been publishing the reports of research, development, and application in this field since the first material was available. The 46-page group, however, represents a bit of a departure-a continued story. Succeeding installments will appear in January and February 1959. The package includes ore processing by various methods, chemical recovery of nuclear fuels, effect of radiation on products and processes, the chemistry of heavy elements, and a few miscellaneous items.
'Gold ore processing 'was the subject of our Staff-Industry Report two Christmases ago. Along with it we published small-scale studies by a different company on the recovery of cyanide from gold mine effluents by ion exchange. This month the same author, Goldblatt, presents the confirming pilot plant studies which show the process to be economically attractive.
astes in vertical tubes might somewhere be about toothpaste on a cold a fundamental study with nuclear fuel overtones. Some problems of solid fuel rcome by using a paste fuel, and the article on page 1793 covers preliminary
Mercury catalysts have had wide use in sulfonating aromatic compounds. B
Research has been going on in India on mercury and mercurous sulfate for catalyzing sulfonation of fatty oils, With Turkey red oil as an example, results indicate greater than 40% increase in yield over previously used catalysts.
O-Xylene as a starting material for phthalic anhydride preparation is another subject of Indian research reported in this issue. Results indicate 6270 conversion of o-xylene using vanadium pentoxide as a catalyst. Maleic anhydride was the main oxidation product of m- and p-xylenes. Progress in separating the isomeric xylenes, such as reported by Michaels of MIT at the recent symposium of the ACS North Jersey Section, should make this work even more attractive.
VOL. 50, NO. 12
DECEMBER 1958
171 1
