THE CHEMICAL WORLD THIS WEEK

The Lancer sideloader Serving Toronto's container terminal

PETROCHEMICALS:

Capacity Added in Wales BP Chemicals (U.K.), Ltd., will un­dertake a $140 million, three-year ex­pansion program at its facility near Baglan Bay, South Wales, the com­pany announced last week. The pro­gram, involving a whole new complex, will give BP Chemicals (U.K.) one of the largest petrochemicals facilities in Europe. Also, the plan represents the largest single new plant investment made in the BP group.

Heart of the complex will be a steam cracker with annual capacities of 340,000 long tons of ethylene, 200,-000 long tons of propylene, and 60,000 long tons of butadiene. The new unit will replace a cracker that turned out 50,000 long tons per year of ethyl­ene, 40,000 long tons per year of propylene, and 7500 long tons per year of butadiene—or slightly less than 100,000 tons of the three prod­ucts combined. Feedstock for the new cracker will come from BP's nearby Llandarcy refinery.

Most of the ethylene produced at the complex will feed a new 260,000 long-ton-per-year vinyl chloride mon­omer plant. This in turn will supply a polyvinyl chloride unit with initial capacity of 45,000 long tons annually. The vinyl monomer plant will replace 130,000 long-ton-per-year existing ca­pacity using a combined ethylene/ acetylene feed, and will use instead the B. F. Goodrich oxy-hydechlorina­tion process. The PVC plant will use the Pechiney bulk polymerization process.

Also in BP's plans for the Baglan Bay complex is a 50,000 long-ton-per-year isopropanol plant using propylene from the cracker. Chlorine for the PVC plant will come from a 150,000 long-ton-per-year chlorine plant pow­ered by new 95-Mw(e). onsite power station.

In addition to the new complex, BP has a 50,000 long-ton-per-year bu­tadiene unit and a 35,000 long-ton-per-year polybutenes plant under construc­tion at its Grangemouth, Scotland, fa­cility. And at Baglan Bay, a 7000 long-ton-per-year ethylene amines plant is being commissioned.

BP's Baglan Bay program and other plant under construction will hike substantially the company's capacities in basic petrochemicals and derived products. By the end of 1971, BP's capacities in long tons annually for these materials will look like this: eth­ylene, 590,000; propylene, 405,000; butadiene, 130,000; PVC, 195,000; vinyl chloride, 260,000; isopropanol, 80,000; and polybutenes, 50,000.

CONTAINERIZATION:

Intermodal Is the Word Thomas W. "Teddy" Gleason, presi­dent of the International Longshore­men's Association, mounted a podium in Baltimore last week and said: "In­termodal. That's the word that scares me the most." It should. Inter-modal (integrated land-sea-air) trans­portation of containerized cargo could reduce by 90% the number of dock workers that today handle cargo. Con-tainerization, as another man remarked at last week's international container symposium in Baltimore, may well be the biggest revolution ever to hit the transportation-distribution industry.

There was little to indicate by view­ing the displays that the chemical industry is keyed to this upheaval. But after a few inquiries at the exhibit booths C&EN learned that Grace Line is shipping fertilizer and other ma­terials between U.S. ports and Vene­zuela; that Du Pont is sending seven to eight containers full of man-made fiber chemicals to Rotterdam every week; that Union Carbide is trans­porting polyvinyl chloride and polyeth­ylene from Texas to New Jersey on Carbide-owned ships designed for con­tainerized cargo. And Grace Line says about 30% of all chemicals shipped by Grace are containerized.

The containerization concept boils down to little more than automated cargo handling. Materials are put in boxes made of steel, aluminum, glass fiber, plywood, and combinations thereof. The boxes—or pallets, or tanks enclosed in frames—are rolled or carried off trains or trucks and then packed in the open on freighters. In Baltimore, 100,000 feet of floor space were given over to displays by rail

lines, port authorities, steel companies, wood firms, airlines producing jumbo jets, container makers—everybody but customers, because it was a show by and for the container industries.

But as the president of Sea-Land, Michael R. McEvoy, told the sym­posium, "Nothing really happens till somebody sells something. It is the customer who controls our revolution." He said his industry is like the mem­bership committee of a country c l u b -concerned with parochial club affairs rather than the realities of the outside world. "If you feel forgotten, cus­tomers," he said, "don't worry. Your day has not yet come."

Longshoremen, too, are looking for their day, countered Mr. Gleason of ILA, which at press time was working out a new contract with the merchant industry over containerization issues. "Management has got to learn," he declared, "that it can't take it all."

Union problems are only one issue the chemical community might be advised to be aware of as it integrates into containerization. The whole sys­tem of moving cargo is shifting from man to computer control. New pack­aging techniques are on the horizon, as well as new materials.

FLOW INSTRUMENTS:

New Meters Stay Clean At the 1968 Instrument Society of America show at New York City's Coliseum last week, two instrument makers introduced flow metering sys­tems based, in one case, on new tech­nological principles and, in the other case, on new design concepts. Badger Meter Co. displayed the first commer­cial model of its nuclear magnetic res-

18 C&EN NOV. 4, 1968

Democratic nominee Humphrey The theme—making science a true servant of social purpose

onance flowmeter which measures liq­uid flow without any moving parts or electrodes in the flow stream. Brit­ain's B. Rhodes & Son, Ltd., intro­duced to the U.S. the first turbine-type transmitter with the propeller car­tridge outside the flow stream.

What seems so simple as measuring liquid flow through a pipeline is often a problem which chemical engineers bemoan. Many metering devices, which operate in the flow stream, dis­turb the fluid dynamics of the stream, cause pressure drops, and become coated with suspended matter from the process stream. Badger's new flowmeter completely eliminates such interference with its nothing-in-the-stream design. Rhodes' new flow­meter minimizes such interference with its only-the-propeller-in-the-stream design.

Badger's flowmeter can measure the flow rate and volume of chemical proc­ess streams with hydrogen or fluorine as a major constituent. Such streams include all aqueous liquids, hydrocar­bons, and fluorocarbons.

As a process stream enters the ce­ramic tube of the flowmeter, a mag­netic field surrounding the tube mag­netizes the nuclei of either the hydro­gen or fluorine. A radio-frequency field is applied to cause the magnetic vector to precess, or wobble, at a high rate of speed, thus producing a strong resonant signal.

Then, the magnetized fluid is "tagged" by using a modulating sig­nal to upset the magnetic orientation in small segments or "windows" of the fluid. A receiver downstream detects these demagnetized "win­dows." Signals from the modulator and receiver run through a phase comparator and into a frequency con­troller, which operates the flow in­struments. Price: about $5500.

Rhodes' new flowmeter is based on the simple design innovation of hous­ing the transmitter cartridge at a 45° angle to the line of flow so that only the propeller is exposed to the process stream. This design allows rapid ac­cess to the cartridge for repairs with down-times of only a few minutes.

THE ELECTION:

HHH on Federal Science Should Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey upset political odds-mak­ers and win the Presidential election, the scientific community can look for significant changes in the Govern­ment's managerial setup for science, particularly in the President's science advisory apparatus. In the most com­prehensive position paper on science policy advanced to date by any of the three major Presidential contenders,

Democratic hopeful Humphrey also told the nation's scientists and engi­neers that they could look for a greater federal effort to put U.S. scientific and technological resources to use in fur­thering national social objectives.

In the area of federal science man­agement, Mr. Humphrey said specifi­cally that he would give "serious con­sideration" to combining the Office of Science and Technology and the Ma­rine Science and Space Councils. These are the three policy planning bodies in the White House science ad­visory apparatus. The purpose of combining the three, Humphrey ex­plains, would be to "gain a greater ef­fect on their policy-level directors and the strength of a combined multidis-ciplinary staff."

Humphrey also proposes to upgrade the Federal Council for Science and Technology, mainly by having the Vice President, rather than the direc­tor of OST, serve as its chairman. The council—which provides the principal coordinating mechanism for the total federal effort in science and technology—is composed of the top-policy-level representative from each of the federal agencies involved in science and technology. But lest any­one get the impression that he pro­poses to downgrade the role of the di­rector of OST, Mr. Humphrey hastens to add that, if he is elected President, the director of OST would be asked to attend every meeting of the Cabinet and of the National Security Council "to be sure that considerations of sci­ence and technology are brought into every issue."

In addition to these managerial changes, other specific Humphrey pro­posals include:

• Establishing a set of multidisci-plinary technological institutes on ur­ban science, transportation, and envi­ronmental management.

• Doubling of "ocean-related activ­ities" over the next four years.

• Providing more funds for basic re­search—"substantially greater sup­port for the National Science Foun­dation . . . including support for be­havioral sciences, and new contract and grant programs in other civilian mission-oriented agencies."

• Tying R&D growth to that of the gross national product.

Meanwhile, Republican Presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon was step­ping up his attack on the Johnson-Humphrey Administration for alleg­edly contributing to what he calls a crisis in American science and technol­ogy. "Today, the U.S. is shortchang­ing its scientific community," Mr. Nixon says. "We are risking the open­ing of a research gap between our ef­fort and that of the Soviet Union. Faced with the dynamic possibilities for science, the current Administration is hobbled by the static philosophy that technological potentialities are lim­ited—that we have reached a tech­nological 'plateau.' " This attitude, he says, is "particularly perilous" in the realm of defense.

Mr. Nixon is particularly critical of the Administration's "wavering atti­tude" toward R&D support. "Scien­tific activity cannot be turned off and on like a faucet," he points out.

FEDERAL LABS:

Interagency Use Pushed "Our interest in effective use of fed­eral laboratories is not just a shot in the dark," a staff member of the House Subcommittee on Science, Research, and Development tells C&EN. This comes in the wake of the subcommit­tee's highly critical report, "Utiliza­tion of Federal Laboratories." As­suming the political complexion of the committee won't change next year, the science group, headed by Rep. Emilio Q. Daddario (D.-Conn.), plans to follow up on the issues raised in

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