The Waterbury Democrat., 1942-08-06

ing, idle refinery equipment which can be assembled in some 30 different refinery area; and by the end of the year be put to producing 100000 tons of buta- diene a year.
 Now this is important news. Bu- tadiene, you'll recall, is the essential raw material that goes into synthe- tic rubber Mix appropriately 80 per cent butadiene with 20 per cent styrene, let 'em polymerize, which is the fancy chemical name for build up" and Buna s synthetic rubber comes out here. The gov ernment,s synthetic rubber program calls for the manufacture of Buna s synthetic rubber at the rate of 100000 tons 8 year, 480,000 tons of it to be made from petroleum prod ucts. To produce the butadiene go- ing into this Buna rubber, the Rubber Reserve Company has let contracts for the construction and operation of some 24 butadiene plants, producing an average of 27,- 900 tons of butadiene each, or a to- tai of some 648,000 tons. Shell, Southern California Gas, Humble oil, Atlas Oil, Koppers, Sinclair and Cities Service are each building one butadiene plant. Standard of Louisi- ana, Neches Butane and Rubber Synthetics are building two apiece, and Carbide and Carbon Chemical are building To- First of the plants will start producing in Septmber of this year, and the last in August, 1943.
 POSSIBILITIES PROBED
 The building of these plants re- quires lot of critical materials, particularly copper and steel. In fact, big part of the drawback in expanding the synthetic rubber pro- gram has been the scarcity of criti- cal materials for the plants. Wright Gary's discoveries of suitable buta- diene refinery equipment already in existence are important, therefore because they show that about 30 per cent of this 638,000-ton produc- tive capacity may not have to be built, or that butadiene can be pro- duced sooner than had been hoped or that the butadiene and synthetic rubber programs can be expanded, or that 30 per cent of the critical materials scheduled to go into the butadiene plants can be diverted to something else. Gary's report makes 1t clear that this old equipment Is not 100 per cent complete for use as is. But he estimates that 1t Is 90 per cent complete, and will re- quire only 10 per cent more critical materials to put 1t into operation.
 Putting this equipment into op- eration simply requires that the re- fineries which now have the idle units swap among themselves or pool spare parts in such way that complete plants can be assembled.
 The moral of this virtual finding of 100000 tons annual butadiene productive capacity is exactly the point that Henry J. Kaiser makes when he says he can tool up his shipyard for the manufacture of cargo planes by improvising, by picking up idle machines from all over the country and putting them to work.
 SCRAPE FOR SCRAP
 Discovery of this idle equipment in the petroleum industry didn't just happen. It was an organized search. Three months ago, the Of- fee of the Petroleum Co-ordinator put up to the Petroleum Industry War Council, which is the fancy named trade association of the big shot oil company executives, the question of whether the rcflneries could make butadieen in existing cracking units and stills. Some 1000 questionnaires went out and about the same number of reports came back. Technical experts were put on this job, pilot plants were built, and in each of the refining areas, every piece of refinery equipment, in use and idle, was catalogued. Two requirements were laid down - that the butadiene plants be made from existing equipment and that they get in operation by the end of the years.
 After a couple of months of this preliminary research, Wright Gary was sent on his junket to inspect the refinery areas. He travelled for month--and look what he found.
 The raw materials that will go into this butadiene production are distressed gasoline for which there is now no market, and butane, a refinery by-product gas. And not only will butadiene be produced, but also toluene for INT explosives, benzol for aviation gas, styrene for synthetic Buna s rubber, and iso. butylene, the raw material used in the making of the new "bathtub" or butyl rubber.