Petrochemical industry

“ In other words, we might have had to wait till 1965 to reach our present state of knowledge concerning the theory of benzenoid compounds if the coal-tar industry had not been in existence. And this is not the only way in which the industry has helped the science, for in the course of manufacture many new compounds and many new chemical transformations have been incidentally discovered, which have thrown great light on chemical theory. From the higher standpoint of pure science, the industry has therefore deservedly won a most exalted position. ”

“ Allied to the chemical industries just mentioned is the nitrate industry for making nitric acid from the nitrogen of the air. Nitrates are used in many processes of chemical manufacture and particularly in those for the production of smokeless powders. The fertilizer industry is of large importance because it deals with phosphorus, white phosphorus being not only one of the best smoke producing materials but a material that is, as stated elsewhere, of great use against men through its powerful burning qualities. ”

“ The industrial output is built up as a sequence to industrial concentration. This is evidenced all down the line, notably in the output of coke-oven ammonia from the steel industry and in that of organic ammoniates from the meat-packing industry. It is this influence of co-ordinated industrial concentration, along with the call for the major operations, that controls the supply of by-product nitrogen; so the development and handling of the industrial output comes naturally to be largely in the hands of trade combinations. ”

“ Compressed gases like air, oxygen, acetylene, alcohol and vinegar production from acetylene, wood, animal and mineral carbon industry, production of artificial gems, manufacturing of building materials like gypsum and cements, insecticides, utilization of starches are only a few of the important problems which are to be solved by Czech chemists for the good of Czech chemical industry.
The line of chemical industries in Czechoslovakia waiting for chemists and enterprising men is really inexhaustible. ”

“ In this respect the introduction of closed, ventilated, mechanical mixing apparatus provided with mechanical stirrers, closed and ventilated mechanical dipping and drying apparatus, are especially important. Certain modern American machines carry through the whole complicated process of the phosphorous match industry automatically. Seeing that prohibition of white phosphorus is an accomplished fact and that matches free from risk in their manufacture answer every purpose, the universal enforcement of the prohibition of white phosphorus should be striven for in civilised states. ”

“ The air of large cities, which are the seats of manufacturing industry, is always more or less charged with the exhalations given off by chemical and other works. The sulphuric-acid works contribute sulphuric, sulphurous, nitrous, and arsenious acids; copper works, in which pyrites is employed, give off large quantities47 of sulphurous acid, mixed with arsenic and a little copper; manure works, in many cases, send out compounds of fluorine, besides sulphuric acid ”

“ If the roused and insurgent consumers secure the means of production of the salt industry, in all probability they will confiscate this industry for their own profit, and their first thought will be, not to relegate it to free competition, but rather to exploit it, in common, for their own account. They will then name a director or a directive committee to operate the saltworks, to whom they will allocate the funds necessary to defray the costs of salt production. ”

“ We have here the problem of bigness. Its lesson should by now have been burned into our memory by Brandeis. The Curse of Bigness shows how size can become a menace-both industrial and social. It can be an industrial menace because it creates gross inequalities against existing or putative competitors. It can be a social menace- because of its control of prices. [2] Control of prices in the steel industry i powerful leverage on our economy. For the price of steel determines the price of hundreds of other articles. ”

“ Our aim is to sketch the outlines of a new science which is to intermediate between the modern laboratory psychology and the problems of economics: the psychological experiment is systematically to be placed at the service of commerce and industry. So far we have only scattered beginnings of the new doctrine, only tentative efforts and disconnected attempts which have started, sometimes in economic, and sometimes in psychological, quarters. The time when an exact psychology of business life will be presented as a closed and perfected system lies very far distant. ”

“ The value of the material, as any chemist knows, is in its fertilizing contents for particular purposes. For certain purposes, the merchants who deal in the product add the necessary quantities of phosphoric acid that the material is deficient in, to bring it up to Government standard. ”

“ The industrial stomach cannot live without coal: industry is a carbonivorous animal, and must have its proper food. ”

“ Some idea of the expansion in production of these raw materials whose principal use is in synthetic resins may be had by comparing the output in 1923 of tar acids, formaldehyde, phthalic anhydride, maleic anhydride, urea, vinyl acetate, and vinyl chloride, which amounted to 35 million pounds, with the output of 270 million pounds in 1936. The manufacture of these materials is largely by coal-tar distilling companies and makers of chemicals. ”

“ In Germany, Bredig and Ikeda continued their remarkable experiments with 'inorganic ferments,' in particular following out the analogy between the catalytic action of colloidal platinum and that of organic ferments in regard to the action of poisons. They find that the rate of decomposition of hydrogen peroxide in presence of colloidal platinum is inliuenced to an extraordinary degree by substances like prussic acid, hydrogen sulphide, and mercuric chloride, even in minute quantities. ”

“ Coal, as is well known, yields a great variety of substances, many of which are essential to synthetic resin manufacture. Benzene is the starting point for synthetic phenol; naphthalene is used to make phthalic anhydride and maleic anhydride; coke is converted to calcium carbide, which in turn yields acetylene, acetic acid, and many other synthetics; carbon monoxide which is converted to methanol and formaldehyde; and the natural tar acids such as phenol, the cresols, and the xylenols. Limestone is a component of calcium carbide, and salt yields needed alkalies and acids. ”

“ At present the interest of the large chemical corporations in synthetic resins ranges from active participation to apparent indifference; but the growing number of corporations thought of as chemical which are now engaged in experimental production would seem to indicate that in time they will be increasingly important in the production of synthetic resins. ”

“ As I have said, the manufacture of chemical products is not so pleasant or so picturesque in itself as the manufacture of plate-glass and mirrors. Within the last decade the output of sulphuric acid alone from the company's works has more than doubled, and now amounts to more than 200,000 tons a year. ”

“ Let us now take the case of the production of an aniline colour, and let us try to discover what aniline is, and how formed. I pointed to benzene or benzol in the table as a hydrocarbon, C6H6, which forms a principal colour-producing constituent of coal-tar. If you desire to produce chemical appetite in benzene, you must rob it of some of its hydrogen. ”

“ The polystyrene resins, for example, are made by polymerizing styrene or vinyl benzene. Although basically from ethylene and benzene, vinyl benzene may be formed in several ways. Ethylene is found in the gases from the destructive distillation of coal but is obtained commercially by cracking natural gas or petroleum. Styrene, found already formed in the light oil fractions from coal tar, causes gum-forming in motor benzol and certain industrial gases. ”

“ On the large scale, mechanical arrangements are employed for mixing the materials, so as to economise labour, and mineral phosphates, such as apatite, can then be used with advantage. In such cases, blood, sulphate of ammonia, soot, and other refuse matters, are occasionally used to supply the requisite quantity of nitrogenous substances, but large quantities are also made from bone ash, etc., without these additions. ”

“ These purchase the heavy waste products from the large kerosene manufactories, and by special processes convert it into useful commercial articles.—The manufacture of petroleum products from the crude oil is carried on either to obtain the largest number of products of the finest quality, or to obtain the largest yield of kerosene without regard to any other product. Probably the finest petroleum refinery in America, if not in the world, is that of the Downer kerosene oil company of Boston, Mass., and Corry, Pa., of which Joshua Merrill is the manufacturing chemist. ”

“ Various compounds of the elements, as well as some alloys, have been suggested for use in arc-lamp electrodes, and the use of the metals themselves, as well as of various salts, for the manufacture of flashlight powders, is protected by several patents. Investigations have been made to determine the value of the oxides and sulphates as catalysts in the contact process for the manufacture of sulphuric acid, and one patent states that the yield obtained is equal to that given by platinised asbestos. ”

“ Being atomic or molecular, the structure imposes no large scale conditions on the research. Nor is it fair to say that from the point of view of production there is a parallel between the complexity of the molecule and the plant required to make it. The chemically complicated Blue Cross arsenic compounds were produced by Germany in a plant which was simplicity itself when compared with the marvellous installation developed to produce oleum, a concentrated form of the relatively simple sulphuric acid, a fundamental substance in explosives production. ”

“ What products come off depends not only upon the composition of the particular variety of coal used, but upon the heat, pressure and rapidity of distillation. The way you run it depends upon what you are most anxious to have. If you want illuminating gas you will leave in it the benzene. If you are after the greatest yield of tar products, you impoverish the gas by taking out the benzene and get a blue instead of a bright yellow flame. If all you are after is cheap coke, you do not bother about the by-products, but let them escape and burn as they please. ”

“ Instead of the nitrate of soda, either of the nitrates of potash, baryta, or lead may be employed, and, instead of resin, other carbons and hydrocarbons, as coal, sugar, starch, wood, charcoal, &c., may be used. If coal is employed, such as contains the greatest proportion of hydrogen answers the best for this purpose.
It should be observed that the amount of nitro-glycerine which can be retained by the other ingredients will depend upon the degree of fineness to which they are pulverized, and will vary with the ingredients used, and also with the temperature of the atmosphere ”

“ Nearly every manufacturer in this country is deriving, from scientific discoveries, advantages for which there has been little or no payment made to the discoverers. The makers of coal-tar-dyes, and dyers of wool and silk, are using Mitscherlich's discovery of nitro-benzine. Manufacturers of picric acid and "French purple" have enjoyed the fruits of the labours of Dr. Stenhouse. Makers of chlorate of potash and cyanide of potassium are profiting largely by the discoveries of Scheele, Gay-Lussac, and others. ”

“ The tactful hostess, the salon leader, is a social catalyst. The trouble with catalysts, either human or metallic, is that they are rare and that sometimes they get sulky and won't work if the ingredients they are supposed to mix are unsuitable.
But the uranium, osmium, platinum or whatever metal is used as a catalyzing agent is expensive and although it is not used up it is easily "poisoned," as the chemists say, by impurities in the gases. The nitrogen and the hydrogen for the Haber process must then be prepared and purified before trying to combine them into ammonia. ”

“ Metal and hydroquinine are the chemical agents most active in the developing solution most commonly used, soda sulphite, soda carbonate, potassium, metabisulphite, and water completing the formula. But even for standard work there are varieties of developing-baths, while to handle film taken under out-of-the-ordinary conditions still further changes are made. It is in his ability to meet varying circumstances that the factory executive shows his mettle. Test developments may be made on a few inches of film to indicate the exact process to be followed. ”

“ At four ten-thousandths of one percent yield, we'd have to process something like three hundred billion kilograms of raw material and then rectify it through that long and laborious process of fractional crystallization, partial electrolysis, and fractional distillation—with a final partial crystallization. Processing that much raw material would be a lifetime job at best. ”

“ White or yellow phosphorus shall not be employed in the production of matches and other lighting substances. Lighting substances made with white phosphorus shall not be kept for sale, or sold, or otherwise brought on the market. ”