INTERNATIONAL

Chemische Werke Huls has gone in heavily for instrumentation. This is the panel board for the ethylene oxide plant. Such instrumentation will make it possible to run the nearby 50%-owned Bunawerke Huls synthetic rubber plant with 400 people

Huls Expanding Diversification marks com­pany's postwar efforts; 7 0 % of 1 9 5 6 sales were from new lines

JTORBIDDEX to make synthetic rubber by the Potsdam agreement after World War II , the big synthetic rubber plant at Hiils in West Germany had to turn to other lines. So Chemische Werke Hiils has pu t a tremendous effort into developing new products. Last year 70% of its DM 477 million ($144 million) total sales came from prod­ucts not on the market before 1948.

CWH now plans to put up a large plant for Ziegler low-pressure poly­ethylene, using a manufacturing proc­ess developed jointly with Bergwerks-gesellshaft Hibernia. Next summer the new Bunawerke Huls GmbH, comes on stream. C W H has a 50% interest in this plant, and the German "big three" —BASF, Bayer, and Hoechst—own the rest. Its capacity will be 45,000 to 50,000 metric tons of cold rubber per year. It will cost about DM 120 million ($30 million).

CWH is not slackening its efforts to develop new products and new means of manufacturing its old ones. Acety­lene, produced from hydrocarbon and coal gases by the electric arc process, is

the basis for most of CWH's produc­tion. The company is looking at im­proved processes for acetylene and also is trying to find out if it can make some of its products more easily from olefins than from acetylene. Large-scale ex­perimental work is being done on proc­esses for vinylpyridine, dichoroethane, acrylic esters, various acrylonitrile products, terephthalic acid, polyethyl­ene, cold rubber, and sulfonation of alkyl benzene with sulfur trioxide. Polyolefins other than polyethylene are also being studied, as well as poly-diolefins.

A new installation for studying polymer manufacture on a large scale has been finished recently. Its facili­ties include two continuous polymeri­zation batteries. These are used chiefly for work for Bunawerke Huls.

• African Explosives and Chemical In­dustries has awarded a c o n t r a c t to Chemical and Industrial International of Nassau, Bahamas, for construction of a 150-ton-per-day nitric acid plant to be integrated with existing facilities near Johannesburg, South Africa. De­sign and engineering work will be done by Chemical and Industrial of Cincin­nati, Ohio. The unit will be C&I's standard high pressure nitric acid plant. It is expected to go on stream in the spring of 1958.

• Nuclear development agreement between Kaiser Engineers and C. Itoh & Co. of Osaka, Japan, initiates a joint program to study and develop nuclear plant engineering and construction projects in Japan. Itoh, one of Japan's largest trading firms, has a separate nuclear energy department in Tokyo. Its staff is engaged in importing nuclear equipment and products to Japan.

• Farbenfabr iken Bayer AG. is n o w supplying polycarbonates in the form of electrical insulating films. Films are designated as Do 202. The company is also producing limited quantities of polycarbonates in granular form for experimental use in thermoplastic molding.

• East Germany's V E B Mansfe ld -Huettenkombinat has p u t a plant on stream for production of 99 .99% pure selenium. Selenium has been produced electrolytically for several years from Mansfield copper-bearing shale where it is found in an amount of about 17 grams per metric ton of ore. The com­pany has also succeeded in capturing the small amounts of selenium which previously volatilized in the flue dust during the smelting process. East Ger­many is reportedly in a position to meet its own selenium requirements and at a price said to be only a fraction of the world market price.

• Denmark's first a t o m i c ene rgy r e ­actor, located at the Danish nuclear center 20 miles west of Copenhagen, is in operation. The solution-type re­actor operates at a power level of 5 watts and has provisions for an increase of power for special research needs, it will be used for nuclear engineering and training, radioisotope production, and for research.

• Pennsalt Chemicals has formed a wholly owned Canadian subsidiary. The new company will be known as Pennsalt Chemicals of Canada, Ltd . Pennsalt has been supplying specialty products for the Canadian market from its U. S. plants. Subsidiary will en­able better service, company says. Company plans early construction of manufacturing and warehousing facili­ties in eastern Canada.

• More than $ 2 0 million will be spent on the International Minerals & Chemi­cal potash mine at Esterhazy, Saskat­chewan, according to company. A 3000-foot shaft is now being sunk.

6 6 C f i E N 5CPT. 9, 1957