REPORTS
I/EC
borious and lime-consuming but can also create considerable possibility of error. In the metric system, most of this work is eliminated • Since laboratories are already using the metric system almost exclusively, adoption of metric in plant operations would simplify the flow of information from laboratory to plant. • The metric system, already used by most countries, provides the basis for world-wide uniformity of standards. With increasing global communication and trade, the need is now greater than ever for an international system of weights and measures.
Despite these clear-cut advantages, the metric system has thus far made comparatively little headway in most industries. The crux of the problem is the effort and expense that would be involved in switching. The job would be simplified, of course, if everyone made the change at once— but this is far from likely. For over 180 years now, the United States has lived with the British system and grown thoroughly accustomed to it. A complete conversion to metric would require sweeping revisions in all phases of industry and daily living. It would change everything from the way butter and milk are bought at the supermarket to the way that neck sizes and sleeve lengths are specified on men's shirts In industry, it would mean the changing of all equipment for weighing and measuring. Dispensing devices, scales, balances, and other equipment would have to be recalibrated or discarded. The great majority of the company's employees would have to be specially trained to handle the new system. Operating manuals, product specifications, and packaging would have to be changed. The natural tendency of people to adhere to the accepted and the familiar would have to be overcome. Furthermore, the cost would be considerable. But even problems such as these do not discourage enthusiastic proponents of the metric system. Says the product control manager of a midwestern concern: " W e take pride in our national industrial efficiency and production per manhour. Considering what the adop-
WASTE DISPOSAL: a barge if by sea
tion of the metric system could do to streamline this efficiency even more, it seems almost paradoxical that we should not plan an orderly change-over to the metric system." Another industry spokesman emphasizes: "General adoption of the metric system in the United States will eventually come. To procrastinate is only to make the task more difficult." H.J.S.
I/EC
Waste Disposal at Sea Dispersing chemical wastes at sea offer a potential, though limited, method to avoid pollution problems IN
AREAS where
air
and
water
pollution presents serious problems, disposal of industrial wastes by dumping far out at sea gets more and more attention. Deep sea disposal proves especially valuable for materials that are very flammable or toxic or those that produce noxious fumes if burned as a disposal method. In other cases, deep sea dumping of wastes costs less than use of such conventional disposal methods as underground injection, burial, or recovery from concentrated effluent streams. However, disposal at sea by no means offers a complete answer for all problems of waste disposal.
While they are large, the oceans are not an inexhaustable dump. As Harry C. Ballman of the Air Pollution Control Association points out, disposal at sea should be considered as a last means, after all other methods have been explored and found unsatisfactory. Two aspects of deep sea dumping need particular attention—toxicity of the wastes to marine life and the dispersal rate under given océanographie conditions. Toxicity is perhaps the most important consideration in planning a program of waste disposal at sea. In two studies made to investigate toxic effects of wastes dispersed at sea—those for National Lead on ferrous sulfate and sulfuric acid in the New York bight, and for Shell Chemical on organic chlorides in the Gulf of Mexico—the investigators concluded that none of these wastes had any permanent effect on plant, fish, or animal life. The second aspect—that of dispersal—is a process that is not well understood even with considerable research under way today. It has been established that molecular diffusion processes are negligible compared to actual mixing or eddy diffusion. For surface water, eddy diffusion depends on density of the waste, wind, temperature, and stability of the water column, says Donald W. Hood of Texas A & M, who is working on developing deep sea disposal methods. Seldom would wastes be dumped on the surface of the ocean, points out Hood. Usually they would be dumped or pumped from a moving VOL. 49, N O . 3
·
MARCH 1957
29 A
I/EC
IMPROVED CONDENSING and Cooling of Reflux
REPORTS
barge at a depth of the order of 12 feet. Dispersal is one important favor able aspect of sea disposal, especially when compared with disposal in a tributary river. As a result of the vast differences in the rate of dis persion and ultimate volume avail able, sea disposal of some wastes will permit improvement in river condition without increasing the total accumulation at sea, reports Bostwick H. Ketchum of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Considerations in Dispersing Organic Chlorides
Niagara
Aero Heat Exchangers at a Plant of the Hey den Chemical Corp.
Get Better Control of Distillation Product • Liquid or v a p o r temperatures are always held constant by the Niagara "Balanced W e t B u l b " control m e t h o d o f evaporatively c o o l i n g o r c o n d e n s i n g , w h i c h automatically varies the c o o l i n g effect proportionately t o the l o a d . T h e distillation p r o d u c t is therefore uniform t h r o u g h o u t all changes i n climatic c o n d i t i o n s the year around; it is the same i n the heat o f s u m m e r as i n the freezing c o l d o f winter. C o n t i n u o u s m a x i m u m p r o d u c t i o n is thus insured. N o n - c o n d e n s i b l e s are effectively separated at the condensate outlet, with notable s u b - c o o l i n g after separation for greater v a c u u m p u m p efficiency. N I A G A R A A E R O H E A T E X C H A N G E R S g i v e sustained f u l l capacity i n c o o l i n g and c o n d e n s i n g w i t h n o d e p e n d e n c e o n c o o l i n g water . . . eliminating p r o b l e m s o f water s u p p l y , availability, temperature, o r quality. For full information write for Bulletin 120
NIAGARA
BLOWER
COMPANY
Over 35 Years of Service in Industrial Air Engineering Dept. EC-3, 4 0 5 Lexington Ave. N e w York 17, Ν. Υ. District Engineers in Principal Cities of U. S. and Canada For further information, circle number 30 A on Readers' Service Carl, page 135 A 30 A
I N D U S T R I A L A N D ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
J. W. Eberman of Shell Chemical, working with Hood, reports some of the considerations needed for disposing organic chloride wastes. Obviously, very limited solubility of these materials makes diffusion im portant. Assuming a solubility of 50 p.p.m., then a 6000-barrel barge load (250,000 gallons) would re quire 5 billion gallons of sea water— the volume in a hundredth of a square mile with a 400-fathoms depth—a very small part of the ocean. With a barge moving while the wastes are being pumped out, this volume for diffusion could easily be tapped. As organic chlo rides dissolve, they become food for marine bacteria or hydrolyze to hydrochloric acid and carbon di oxide. And limited solubility works in favor of deep sea disposal. N o great amount would be concentrated in solution in a limited volume to increase danger of toxic effects. Lighter fractions of organic chlo rinated wastes may form films on the ocean surface, estimated to have a 0.75-micron thickness. Preliminary studies have shown that this film lasts less than a day, even in quiet water. Economics loom large in any waste disposal program, and are the major drawback with deep sea disposal. Assuming a 10,000-barrel deep sea disposal barge with a 10-ycar life and including all costs except shore facilities, Eberman esti mates the cost to be $3.50 per ton for as few as 12 trips per year for disposing of wastes from Shell Chemi cal's Houston Ship Channel plant to the Gulf of Mexico. In the sum mer a 10,000-barrel barge could be expected to carry 1700 tons of waste
®
QO tetrahydrofurfuryl alcohol
I/EC
REPORTS
and in winter about 1500 tons. With better than ordinary weather making 100 trips per year possible, Eberman estimates the cost to drop to $2.00 per ton. W h a t S o m e Others A r e D o i n g
1.
Is useful as a chemical r a w m a t e r i a l for m a k i n g : • •
2. 3.
1,5-difunctional open chain compounds d i h y d r o p y r a n , d e l t a - h y d r o x y v a l e r a l d e h y d e , glutaric acid
Disperses m a n y difficultly soluble dyes a n d resins. Is a d r i v e r for l e a t h e r dyes. It produces d e e p
penetration
a n d levels spray or f l a m e coats. 4.
Esterifies r e a d i l y a n d is used in the production of high boiling plasticizers a n d nonvolatile herbicides.
Write for Bulletin 206 which describes Q O tetrahydrofurfuryl alcohol, its chemistry, physical properties and uses.
The QuakerOatsCompany The Quaker Oafs (pm parky
QO CHEMICALS
CHEMICALS DEPARTMENT 337E The Merchandise Mart, Chicago 54, Illinois Room 537E, 120 Wall Street, New York 5, New York Room 437E, 48 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd., Portland 14, Oregon In Europe: Quaker Oats-Graanproducten N. V., Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Quaker Oats (France) S. Α., 3, Rue Pillet-Will, Paris IX, France; A S " O t a , " Copenhagen, S. Denmark In Australia: Swift & Company, Pty., Ltd., Sydney In Japan: F. Kanematsu & Company, Ltd., Tokyo
For further information, circle number 32 A on Readers' Service Card, page 135 A 32 A
INDUSTRIAL A N D ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
Chemical plants located adjacent to or near tide water will find most use for large scale waste disposal at sea. Transportation costs will make other disposal methods more economically attractive to plants located inland, except for small quantities of materials. One company which does ship wastes from inland areas to be dis posed at sea is National Aniline Division of Allied Chemical & Dye. Solid mixtures of calcium arsenate and calcium arsenite in steel drums arc dumped 110 miles from shore along the Atlantic Coast. Including shipping from Buffalo, Ν. Υ., labor, and drums (which are lined with a corrosion-resistant coating and meet ICC shipping regulations), the cost for disposal is estimated to be $30 per ton of these mixtures. Extensive surveys have failed to develop a market for this material. Although calculations show that a slurry of the material could be bled into a stream near the plant without harm to the use of the stream, this was never done, as a matter of good public relations. U. S. Steel's Columbia-Ceneva Division at Pittsburg, Calif, has a lease arrangement with a local towing company to dump waste pickle liquor at sea. Another com pany investigating waste disposal at sea is Champion Paper and Fibre, which has dumped black liquor wastes in the Gulf of Mexico. Little trace of the black liquor re mains more than 2 hours after dumping. Several companies report they dispose of radioactive wastes from laboratories at sea. These usually are incased in concrete before dump ing. The sea has been proposed as a possible dump for large quantities of radioactive wastes from nuclear power plants. A preliminary esti mate of the quantity of radioactive wastes to come from nuclear power plants expected in operation by 2000 A.D. indicates that 1/10 of the
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ocean mass would be required to dilute the wastes to the point of safety for humans—and without regard to other life in the sea. Each waste for disposal at sea must be considered individually as to its toxicity, effect on the barge or container materials of construction, solids present as they may plug valves or pumps, and rate of dis persal in the sea. And knowledge of the oceanography and the tidal prism of the dumping area is needed to prevent wastes being carried by currents to areas where long- or short-range toxicity effects may be serious. While deep sea disposal of wastes will prove useful in some cases, still this method must be recognized as limited by costs and the kinds of wastes that can be safely handled. B.F.G.
I/EC
School for Silicones G-E course in silicone rubber technology provides customer service in depth
Division of United States Ceramic T i l e Co.
DOVER, OHIO
PHONE 4-2380
WESTERN DISTRICT OFFICE Phone: ANGELUS 3-6359
Los Angeles, California
THE up-and-coming silicones in dustry is faced with several problems. One of the most pressing, common to
a sizable segment of the chemical world, is how to keep users up to date on improvements. Rubber makes up probably the largest single class of silicone ma terials. Advances in silicone-rubber technology are coming along thick and fast among this country's three basic producers (Dow Corning, Gen eral Electric's Silicone Products Department, and Union Carbide's Silicones Division). Getting this new technology into users' hands is no small problem. G-E feels that it has hit upon a better way to get the changing picture across to cus tomers and prospects than just by relying on its customer-service men. Some two years ago, plans were proposed to bring G-E's rubber know-how to its customers' doorsteps. In many cases, improvements in silicone rubbers change existing for mulations and processing methods. This alters physical properties during fabrication, so new techniques have to be worked out. G-E first took its rubber technicians to the lab of a supplier in the Mid-West and successfully showed their customers' production men how to work with these improved silicone elastomers. Last year, market development of rubber was separated from other functions for silicone products at G-E. John T. Castles, new manager of that activity, decided to set up a more complete program at the Waterford, N. Y., plant. This per-
Circle No. 34 A on Readers' Service Card, page 135 A 34 A
INDUSTRIAL A N D ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY For further information, circle numbers 35 A-1, 35 A-2, 35 A-3 on Readers' Service Card, page 135 A -
