July 2009 Archives

After testing out the H-racer fuel cell toy car sent by BASF (see ICB 5/11/09, p.7) I got the chance to test out a real fuel cell vehicle on July 14 courtesy of General Motor's Chevy Equinox fuel cell demo car powered by Shell's hydrogen.

Shell, in partnership with GM, opened its second hydrogen refilling station in New York for fuel cell car drivers. There aren't any fuel cell cars out there yet for sale but some are testing demo cars such as GM's Chevy Equinox under the company's Project Driveway program.

GM said there are 30 of the model available for testing in New York and 60 in California. The company has overall 115 for testing across the globe. Since the program's inception in January 2008, these cars burned 900,000 miles in total all producing just water as emissions.

The car has an estimated rate of 39 miles per kilogram so if we do the math, it can actually go to more than 160 miles (even 200 miles GM said) before it needs to be filled up again with hydrogen.

At first glance, the car didn't even looked anything like my vision of a greener bat mobile and instead featured a gray SUV/van-type of automobile that any parent with two kids who'd like to have. It did sport a Fuel Cell logo along with trailing green water molecules that look like vines from a distance.

The shiny fuel cell powerhouse is located under the front hood replacing the odd bits and pieces of greasy motor innards typical of a petroleum-powered car. On the back of the car are four exhaust slots where water mists flow out. GM assured no dripping water here.

I had one of the GM officials to chauffered me around a parking lot so I can check the nuts and bolts inside the car (and to avoid being sued in case I crash it). GM did not disclose the cost of the car but said that they were very expensive to make. The fuel cells were hand-made by the way.

One feature that was very interesting to watch while the car is being driven is the energy display monitor near the dash board which shows power flowing from the fuel cell to the motor and/or battery as well as charging power returning to the battery during regenerative braking. It also showed how much petroleum was saved depending on the car's total mileage.

The car that I rode already had 9,392 miles on its hood and indicated about 417 gallons of petroleum saved.

I generally don't like to drive and it has been 10 years since my last attempt but all in all I was very impressed and was mightily tempted to buy an electric vehicle at that moment - if there's one already available and if it's cheap.

All I ask is to put a nice sounding chime to it when the car starts to avoid a possible crash. It's so darn quiet that I didn't even realized it was already turned on! Oh, and GM did assured me that the three hydrogen tanks located underneath are crashed proof.

We don't want another Hindenburg incident, do we?

For five days each year, a few fields in a quiet corner of the UK's West Country becomes a throbbing city of 180,000 people. The Glastonbury Festival of the Performing Arts is a national institution. Started in 1971 by a farmer, Michael Eavis, who had an interest in music, it has grown to become Europe's biggest festival.

Whilst there this year, I started thinking about the organisation and economics of this event, plus its wider impact on the local area and on demand for chemicals.  

At a "meet the organiser" question and answer event, a rather stoned-looking man stood up and said he thought the festival had become a model for a new way of living. He was referring to the "Green Fields" part of the event where people seeking alternatives to conventional lifestyles.

Eavis didn't seem too keen on that idea, but said the festival had been called "the acceptable face of capitalism" because he donates around £2m each year to charities such as Greenpeace and WaterAid.

The local economy must benefit hugely from the festival. There were several hundred stalls selling everything from food to clothes to the "ShePee", which I'll leave to your imagination. Of the 180,000 people attending, 40,000 are workers: a major boost to the economy.     

The huge number of tents covering the site must also stimulate demand for the UK plastics industry: or more likely, China's plastics industry.

"Green" is certainly a key theme of the event. Woe betide anyone trying to avoid the queues at the toilets by hiding behind a bush or hedge. A team of "green police" (see video) wearing British Bobby hats coloured green patrol the site, blowing their whistles and chasing offenders.

The figures for waste produced are staggering. In 2008 the festival recycled 49% or 863.32 tonnes of its waste. This included 193.98 tonnes of composted organic waste, 400 tonnes of chipped wood, 9.12 tonnes of glass, 54 tonnes of cans and plastic bottles, 41 tonnes of cardboard, 66 tonnes of scrap metal, 11.2 tonnes of clothing, tents, sleeping bags, 0.264 tonnes of batteries, 10 tonnes of dense plastic and 0.25 tonnes plastic sheets.

This year the festival also used a fleet of New Holland tractors, all capable of running on 100% biodiesel refined from used cooking oil sourced in the UK.

This year I saw fantastic performances from Prodigy, Will Young, Tom Jones and Neil Young plus DJs like Pete Tong and Deadmau5. Don't tell any of my cool friends, but I also loved Australian legend Rolf Harris!

 

By Elaine Burridge

An elegant hotel in a picturesque seaside setting in Helsinki, Finland, was the venue for the annual FECC Congress last month.

Delegates soaked up the sun's rays in the gardens among the ducks and geese while discussing the main themes, namely the current business environment, implementing Reach, and the challenges and issues facing distributors.

Inside, away from the peace and calm outdoors, executives from chemical distributors and their suppliers, were grabbing cups of coffee as they made the most of the networking opportunities.

Despite the downturn and corresponding corporate cuts in travel budgets, nearly 200 delegates managed to attend the two-day event.

If there were two key words to take away from the meeting, then it would be differentiation and focus, or perhaps that should be refocus.

And, yes, although there is plenty for distribution companies to be negative about as their earnings decrease, albeit not as dramatic as their suppliers who are "going through hell at the moment", there were also positive notes.

One CEO emphasized the resilience of the chemical distributor as a business model with high diversification, flexibility and high barriers to entry.

CEOs of private equity-owned firms also spoke out in favor of their backers, trying to rebut the negative image portrayed during the crisis. Whether people were convinced about the advantages of private ownership was open to debate and not helped by the view of one speaker who said that private equity firms are destroying value and exit routes were closing.
Companies spoke too of the need to differentiate themselves, to refocus on their business model and plan for the long term, to get closer to customers, and to act in a sustainable and responsible manner.

As if the worst economic crisis in decades was not enough to cope with, distributors are having also to grapple with Reach (as is everybody at the moment) and forming substance information exchange forums (SIEFs) while time marches on inexorably towards the 2010 deadline. Add to this industry consolidation and migration, transport issues, drastic cuts in credit insurance cover and tightening credit lines, to name but a few.

And in the background is an ongoing antitrust investigation which kicked off in France and Germany in April, 2007, and which still lingers like a bad smell.

So, here's to next year's event in Barcelona, Spain, where hopefully the sun will shine again and the financial crisis, and perhaps the investigation, will be just another piece of corporate history. Just make sure your company survives until then.

The other day I found myself partially anaesthetised, lying on my back on a specialised bed covered in PVC, gazing up at a man wearing a mask and breathing heavily.
I was at my local National Health Service dentist having some root canal work done on a molar that's been grumbling for some time. As a polymer technologist, there's something strangely comforting about dentist's surgeries, one of the few places where people do not object to polymers from the floor to ceiling in the name of hygiene.
Then two unexpected things happened.
Firstly, it was bearable. My dentist sloshes local anaesthetic onto and into your gums so expertly that you could have your jaw removed and not notice.
Secondly, he took me through what he'd done after the drilling, filling and filing was over.
He explained that my root canals were between 1.6 and 1 cm long (that's about 0.75/inch to 0.5/inch long) and that he'd filled them with gutta percha.
I last heard of gutta percha about 20 years ago on my polymer science and technology degree. Polymers are such a big class of chemicals that I felt at least part of the degree's role was to mention polymers in passing so we could bluff our way into any conceivable  job in the business. It's stood me in good stead for the past 20 years.
As we polymer technologists know, gutta percha is trans-1,4-polyisoprene and is produced in a bioreactor, or tree. Natural rubber and synthetic analogues of natural rubber are the cis-1,4- polyisoprene isomer. Natural rubber is rubbery, gutta percha isn't. That's because one is trans, and packs together well enough to have a developed crystalline nature. Cis-1,4-polyisoprene packs together badly with only limited crystallinity.
I had always wondered two things. What gutta percha was used for, and why my degree was being taught in the polymers metals and dental technology department of Manchester Polytechnic. That's now renamed as the Centre for Materials Science Research at Manchester Metropolitan University.I had thought, when I thought about it at all, that metallurgy was perhaps a dull kind of chemistry, but couldn't guess that polyisoprene held the link between an exciting course like mine, and dentistry.  In one simple answer 20+ years after graduation I found out.
It looks like I've had isoprene at the back of my mind for about half of my life, and all things being equal, I'll have a head full of isoprene to see me thought the remainder. There's something symmetrical about that.