May 2010 Archives

BP's legacy will be a black ring around the Gulf of Mexico and a black eye for the petchem industry

RED ALERT! There is a new conspiracy theory on the whacko circuit: This one blames North Korea for the destruction at BP's Deepwater Horizon rig.

This theory claims that a North Korean freighter, en route to Venezuela from Havana, went about 130 miles off its official course into the Gulf of Mexico, where it launched a submarine commando squad whose mission, it seems was accomplished.

The theorists continue - and I will admit that they lose me here - that the North Koreans did this so President Obama has to use a tactical nuclear weapon to seal the leaking hole in the ocean.

After reading this absurdity, I asked myself, "Is BP paying somebody to plant this story?"

Because people hate BP now.
Really.
I mean they really, really, really hate them. At a dinner party this weekend, conversation was hijacked by the topic of the Gulf disaster, and the least incendiary comment was something to the effect that BP execs should be threatened with violence until they clean all the Gulf's beaches - with toothbrushes.

As of this writing, that monstrous busted well has been pumping out, depending on whom you're listening to, between 5,000-50,000 barrels/day of gnarly and awful hydrocarbonic material.

The New York Times writes, "On May 23, Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana said that 65 miles of his state's coastline had been 'oiled.' Local officials in Jefferson Parish reported that the slick was moving past the shore into environmentally sensitive wetlands."

At dinner, I was the only representative of the petrochemical industry and it was demanded of me to provide an answer.

BP might be able to control media access to the afflicted areas now, but anti-business news organizations are already noticing the oil company's heavy-handed tactics - like ordering deputies to deny access to certain areas - and with a disaster this big? Soon enough the nightmare stories will emerge, and then the entire petrochemical industry will be on the firing line.

Dozens of years of hard work and trust-building will be thrown out, and once again, in the public eye, the industry will be The Villain.

The industry ought to take BP out back and give it a good, biker gang-style stomping.

A recent trip to Eastman's new facility yielded insights beyond a new product release

USUALLY THE Law of Unintended Consequences is not our friend, and the best way to deal with it has been to shrug your shoulders and try and make lemonade from the lemons life has given you.

But what happens when life gives you lemonade? It is a situation Eastman Chemical seems to have found itself in.

On May 13, the company officially cut the ribbon on its new Tritan copolyester facility in Kingsport, Tennessee.

Originally developed in the late-1950s as a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) fiber modifier, Tritan - unnamed at the time - was shelved until 2003, when Eastman chemists were looking for a resin that could withstand higher temperatures in both the manufacturing process and later as a finished molded product: "Polymers that can deal with boiling water," explained Mark Costa, Eastman's executive vice president of specialty plastics, at the opening of the new 60,000 tonnes/year facility.

Running 24-seven, the plant is currently utilizing more than half of its capacity, but the company expects it to be running at full capacity by 2011, with, if demand remains strong, more capacity coming on afterwards. Construction took place from December 2008 to August 2009, and production of Tritan started in December 2009.

THE PUBLIC SPEAKS
From 2003, when the original formula was dusted off, until its launch at the 2007 K-show, Tritan was considered a drop-in higher heat resistant replacement for most polycarbonate applications, especially for housewares and appliances.

But during that time, public sentiment against bisphenol-A (BPA) had grown very strong.

Here's where the Law of Unintended Consequences comes in: Tritan has always been free of BPA.

The company had not set out to make a BPA-free polymer, but it has one now, and consumers want it.

Whether warranted or not, the anti-BPA concerns have been a strong driver, Eastman executives concede.

"Any other polymer would take five to 10 years" to reach where Tritan has gotten "in the last two years," noted Costa. "Our Tritan business has quadrupled in the past 12 months."

Photos courtesy of Eastman Chemical

An old, out-of-print book could introduce chemistry to a new generation - and it is available online

HAVING TROUBLE getting your kids interested in science, specifically chemistry? Tell them it's bad for them, and the government has banned it!

Okay, The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments (GBCE), written by Robert Brent, with excellent illustrations by Harry Lazarus, is not really banned: Original published by Golden Press in 1960, the book's copyright was not renewed since its last printing in 1971 - the edition I used to own - and is now sadly out of print.

Not that any publisher would touch this book these days: With more than 200 experiments to choose from, the GBCE expects junior chemists to be able to work around flame, be capable enough to carefully break glass pipettes, and maybe even make their own hydrogen or chlorine gas.

Of course GBCE warns, "Be careful not to breathe fumes!"

Absolutely none of this would pass any of the super-sensitive child safety regulations on the books these days.

But you can still get a copy of this fabulous primer via the website About.com. The site's chemistry editor, Anne Marie Helmenstine, has provided a link to a free pdf of the GBCE.

"For the aspiring chemist who can adhere to the safety precautions, this remains one of the best do-it-yourself chemistry books around," she writes.

One commenter at About.com, Jerry Svoboda, writes, "I learned to think for myself, how to get things done."

Blogger Chris Brunner goes farther, noting, "This book is... the bible for any young chemist-in-training."

"Comparable chemistry books sold today are designed for parents as much as for kids, offering the wan pleasures of experiments that require no glass pieces and no open flames and use only environmentally safe materials," laments Ken Silverstein, author of the non-fiction book The Radioactive Boy Scout, about a boy inspired by the GBCE to build his own nuclear reactor.

"The Golden Book, by contrast, promised to open the doors to a brave new world. It was the era of JFK and the New Frontier, of satellite launches and the race to the moon. The sky truly was the limit," notes Silverstein.

"Chemistry is one of the most important of all sciences for human welfare," the GBCE emphasizes in its introduction. "Chemistry means the difference between poverty and starvation and the abundant life."

And gosh, who wants kids to know about that?

Earth Day just had its 40th birthday, and it's put on some weight - and picked up some baggage, too

THE REACTION was probably not what the organizers expected: A serious level of cynicism towards the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, especially with its multitude of corporate sponsors. The Washington Post said the event was suffering a "midlife crisis," and The New York Times accused high-end toy store FAO Schwarz of "taking advantage of Earth Day to showcase Peat the Penguin."

There was also a level of righteous indignation from some. In response to why she was not "celebrating" Earth Day, blogger Christie Ritz King wrote, "Why, because we are Earth conscious every day."

Green means money, that's for certain. So much so now that lawsuits are being filed against companies that have been charging top dollar for products that are "green" in name only.

But since the first Earth Day, held on April 22, 1970, much excellent work has been done to clean up - and keep clean - the environment.
Are people taking things for granted? Perhaps to a certain extent, but regulations - and even stronger nowadays, public shame - are certain to keep us all in line.

GODZILLA IS GREEN
The exploitation of public eco-consciousness has been always with us.
The best example of this, in my opinion, is the movie Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster, where the mighty atomic lizard battles a living embodiment of pollution in an epic battle that could be best described as psychedelic.
The film's theme song, the bubblegum pop "Save the Earth," is impossible to get out of your head.

The movie, however, politely ignores the fact that the 200 tonnes Smog Monster, called Hedorah in Japan, is, by the end of the flick, now a dead 200 tonnes mountain of toxic sludge. So we got rid of one problem, but still have another.
Perhaps it's a metaphor...

Another fun fact that's sci-fi and Earth Day related: The original Earth Day flag, that mutated US flag with a yellow Theta on a field of green (see above), with green and white stripes, was designed by Ron Cobb, who went on to design sets and props for the genre films Alien, Star Wars, Conan the Barbarian and others.

NATURAL & DELICIOUS
If Earth Day is about using our planet's resources responsibly, here's a memory that fits: It was either August 1972 or 1973, and we'd been visiting some of my parents' friends who lived on a farm in Upstate New York.

A mutual friend had struck a deer on his way up to the farm, and had called the police. When the friend asked what would happen to the deer carcass, the cop replied, "Do you know anyone who can dress a deer?"

And that's how I tasted venison as a child!