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"BUTADIENE BOULEVARD" At eÂe fefc. "Main Street" in the Nation's butadiene program. Here butadiene is re· covered from the mixed hydrocarbon gas as if comes from (he dehydrogenator where rt-butyfenes were converted to butadiene, in these columns butadiene is recovered from a stream containing 20 per cent and purified to a point where the finished materials wit! have a concentration of a little more than 98.5 per cent. The butylène that is re­covered here will be recycled through catalytic reacton to form more butadiene.

Heches Butadiene Unit Opened By F. J. V A N ANTWERPEN, Associate Editor

/ " ^ N A soggy piece of Texas prairie Ameri-^ • ^ can engineers have erected a technical colossus—a testimony to man's sheer de­termination to conquer his enemies, whether human or natural. The human enemies are the Axis powers, the natural enemies were swamp, flood, insects, and gravity, and the colossus is the Neches Butane Products Co. at Port Neches, Texas.

Out of this plant will come some 100,000 short tons of butadiene per year equiva­lent to one seventh of t h a t necessary for our rubber program. Into the plant went the engineering and construction genius of a nation of builders, and a t times, in the face of obstacles raised by the perversities of men and Nature, that determined ge­nius seemed slated to fail. But today one half of the immense Neches plant has been

is being produced, but it is in the building, the accomplishing.

The site o f the plant was not chosen on the basis of the building location, but be­cause it was conveniently near the plants of the five petroleum companies tha t or­ganized to form Neches. Preliminary surveys were carried out on horseback be­cause of the imud, and this means of travel­ing was continued long into the construc­tion period. Tremendous amounts of earth had to be carted to make the ground passable. A spring flood in 1943 trans­formed the already soggy landscape into a shallow sea,, and for weeks afterward the ground was squidgy mucilage, preventing efficient construction. The flood brought problems besides tha t of ooze. Labor liv­ing quarters were flooded at the same time, and there w a s a general decamping of the

C H E M I C A L A N D E N G I N E E R I N G N E W S

CHEMICAL FRONT ACTION ON THE AMERICAN

formally dedicated, and the other half is η earing completion.

Like most of the famous yarns of achievement, the exciting story of the Neches, which is the largest plant of its kind in the world, is not so much in what

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316

men for drier and higher sections of the country. Located near Por t Neches, a town with a normal population of 2,500, the construction force of 6,000, imported mostly from the Southwest, brought with them critical problems in housing, health, and food. The Defense Plant Corpora­tion built about 900 temporary buildings for the workmen, and this settlement promptly earned the name of Camp Neches. But these houses proved insuffi­cient, especially when 2,000 more workers for the two adjacent copolymer plants de­scended on the neighborhood.

Six hundred trailers were exported from the North into the section and were set up in a large camp. These were aug­mented by the hundreds of privately owned trailers brought by arriving workers.

Recognizing the threat of epidemics, the U. S. Public Health Service sponsored and carried out the inoculation of the citizens of these newly created, mush­rooming settlements. Drinking water facilities and sewage disposal systems were enlarged. A public health center was completed to care for the health of the group.

The idea of constructing such a plant was conceived by Herbert Henderson, vice president of Gulf Oil Corp., while on a visit to Washington to discuss the production of butadiene from petroleum. He interested four other companies beside his own— namely, the Atlantic Refining Co., the Pure Oil Co., the Texas Co., and the Socony-Vacuum Oil Co. None of them had experience in the manufacture of butadiene, but there were other organiza­tions that had, and arrangements were made for reviewing information on all available processes.

Thorough s tudy convinced a commit­tee representing the management of the five corporations t ha t such a venture was feasible. This decision was reached March 20, 1942. The Neches Butane Products Co. was organized, and one of the tough­est production problems ever undertaken by the oil industry was under way. Into the rapidly expanding enterprise was called the Lummus Co.—petroleum plant engineers and contractors with a solid reputation for building petroleum refining units.

Facing the companies were some un­compromising facts: Never had butadiene been made on such, a scale, the process had to be engineered wi thout delay, the maxi­mum quanti ty of butadiene must be at­tained per barrel of petroleum with the minimum of waste, results must be ob­tained quickly, and there were national shortages of labor, materials, and trans­portation equipment.

But the combined resources of the oil industry, via pilot plants and experimen­tal tests, soon settled the question of which process to use. The Defense Plant Corporation awarded the contract on May 26,* 1942.

I n June 1942 construction started. Problems multiplied with progress.

Drainage canals had to be built to rid the area of water. Solid supports were needed for the massive distillation towers—some 175 feet tall and 14 feet in diameter. Test cores failed to show a solid rock founda­tion, for the land was marshy and un-suited to support the weight of such super-fractionators. The supports had to be made by sinking concrete piling 40 feet into the muck. In addition to these pil­ings, thousands of such foundations had

to be made for the storage spheres, s team plant, and pumping stations. All in all, 11,830 concrete shafts were set.

Sometimes it was impossible to t rans­port t imber by truck to the building loca­tion, and the lumber had to be floated in through the drainage canals.

For cooling water, a mile-long covered aqueduct was built from a pumping s ta­tion on the Neches River to the plant. Water flow is regulated by remote control from a panel board in the plant, and blades on the intaJ . pumps are feathered and change pitch in response to the de­mand. T o return the water to the river, some 308,000,000 gallons per day, an out­fall canal several miles long was dredged.

The evolution of the plant caused enor­mous difficulties. After the plans and operation were agreed upon, it was found tha t facilities for building the towers were not available—every company ordinarily engaged in such work was too completely occupied with .other war orders to accept additional loads. Further, even if t h e vessels were made by the usual fabricators, transportation means for getting t h e towers to the plant location were pitifully inadequate. •

Consequently the management decided to erect its own tower shop. Engineers rounded up plate-forming rolls, hydraulic presses, automatic welding equipment, and hatched a complete pressure still manufacturing unit .

The constructors were fortunate in ob­taining the new type seam welders, but a t the same time this posed another problem, for on the marshy soils a building 900 feet long had to be built with no variation in level; otherwise the welding equipment would produce welds which were too thick.

Canals had to be dredged to siphon the water from marshes and tlie Umber and material for the first buildings could not be brought muck cleared from the ditches with draglines before construction to the property because of mud and lack of roads, so it was of the plant for the Neches Butane Products Co. could be started. dumped into a drainage canal and floated 1 mile to the building site.

V O L U M E 2 2 , N O . 5 » » » M A R C H 1 0 , 1 9 4 4 3 1 7

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Leffc. Excavation i$ begun for the hug© fractionating towers. workers wear boots on .account of the wet and soggy ground.

T h e liquefied gas is stored in Horton-dptteres a t 75 psi, which is its vapor pres­sure at 130° F.—a temperature which represents ext reme summer conditions. T h e Hortonsphere farm a t Neehes, con­taining 42 tanks , is the largest collection of these storage vessels in the world. From storage t h e gas is brought to the butylene concentration section, known as group II . By fractionation in eight towers, including some with 120 decks, the isobu-t a n e and isobutylene are separated from the normal b u t a n e and normal butylenes a n d the Iso compounds are sent back to the refineries to make aviation gasoline.

C&m&lytic Dehydrogenation

T h e ri^-butylenes or butenes, which were obtained from t h e B-B feed and stored, a r e then sent through three double-pass heaters.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 398

To save time, the towers were built in one piece and weldeQ on cradles arranged on railroad car trucks. From the shop they were hauled by the one-locomotive railroad to butadiene alley. Tremendous derricks were employed to raise the huge towers to their concrete foundations.

Neehes Butane Products is divided into two units—one the mirror image of the other. T h e north unit is now operating, while the south unit is expected to b e on stream by late spring. Twenty-seven towers are in the north group, and 21 in the south. There is more equipment in the north production area, as i t contains the solvent purification buildings and this was not duplicated in the sou th end of the plant .

Production of Butadiene Isolation of n-butylenes

The B-B supply (butylene-butane) is forwarded via pipe line to the Neehes plant from the petroleum refineries which tower over the Texas plains in t h a t area.

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I fabricating plant is built to make the many towers needed.

C H E M I C A L A N D E N G I N E E R I N G N E W S 318

In the summer of ' 43 , the heavy rains flooded the plant and flooded Camp Neches, the living quarters for the con­struction crews, and seriously damaged the very expen­sive precision equipment that had already been installed.

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Dredges cut huge canals as shown above to transport ihz cooling water from the Neches River to the plant, and then it is carried back again through the outfall canal after the water has served Its purpose.

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Hundreds of pumps are to be used for pumping the cooling water

Steam for processing is generated at the plant. Water is obtained at the river pumping station.

TO MISS THE CLEVELAND

EMPLOYMENT EARING HOUSE APRIL 3-7, 1944

Last September at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 2,809 interviews were completed in 4 days.

EMPLOYERS needing chemists and chemical engineers

CHEMISTS and CHEMICAL ENGINEERS wishing to contact employers

S h o u l d P l a n t o b e P r e s e n t !

Nowhere else will employers find so large a group of persons with diversified training and experience.

Neches Butadiene Unit O p e n e d ( C O N T I N U E D FROM PAGE 318)

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Before entering the catalytic reactor, the hydrocarbon gases are mixed with superheated steam. The mixing is done in a dome-shaped reactor, the butène va­por entering the top, the steam a t the side. From this mixer the stream enters the catalyst chamber where pa r t of the buty l ­ènes are dehydrogenated to butadiene. Products coming off the bottom of the catalyst towers are r^-butylenes, butadiene , hydrogen, C2, C3 fractions, carbon mon­oxide, carbon dioxide, and steam. In order the products go through a waste heat boiler, condensers for the removal of water, and compressors, from wThich the gases go to group IV in the plant where the various products are eliminated one by one until pure butadiene results.

Concentration and Purification of Butadiene

T h e compressed gases pass through a lean oil absorber, where the oil absorbs pe-

troleum fractions higher that*. C3, t h e C2, C3 mostly propane, and H? fract ions are taken off the top to b e used fear fuel. The lean oil and its components a,re serat to a stripper where the absorbed hydrocarbons are removed and lean oil roco^vered for re­cycling. Further fractionalimg produces butadiene of 98 .5% pur i ty .

The new colossus of t he Te>cas pLain has a tremendous appetite. It~s operating force must marshall a wide variety of raw materials through the complicated proc­essing facilities before butadiene p»uts in its appearance. The pla.nt,oi3 continuous operation, with three 8-hoi_a.r shifts of men, has a capacity of ΙΟΟ,ΟΟΟΐ annixsl tons of butadiene, which should, with proper processing, yield 120,000 tons of Bmina S. In turn, the Armed Forcesarm.d the essen­tial drivers of the Nat ion sfcsould xeaiize some 28,000,000 tires from tliis amount of synthetic rubber.

Nowhere else will candidates for employment find such varied oppor­tunities — academic, governmental, and industrial.

For further details and restric­tions on its use, see Chemical and Engineering News, this issue, page 344.

TO MISS IT?

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Deferment of Professionally Trained Men I n e s t i m a b l e d a m a g e will b e done t o t h e

war indus t r ies if professionally t r a ined young m e n in cri t ical occupat ions, such as chemis t ry , engineering, a n d physics, a re draf ted in to t he A r m y as p lanned b y a new Select ive Service ruling, according to A . B . N e w m a n , cha i rman of the Manpower C o m ­mi t t ee of t he American In s t i t u t e of Chemica l Engineers and dean of engineering of t he College of the C i t y of New York. His re­marks were directed a t Local Board M e m o ­r a n d u m 115 which became effective F e b . 1 and which, he s t a t e d , "prohib i t s t he defer­m e n t of m e n be tween the ages of 18 and 22. except u n d e r very special considerat ion, and which removes discret ion on indust r ia l de ­ferments from t h e local b o a r d " . He said :

Thia group, totaling about 15,000, contains substantially all the men who have come out of college in the most recent graduating classes. These men are contributing an important part to our war production and to the development of new weapons of war. * * * This is a technical war, and if we are to go ahead of our enemy in

technical developments, wo muet Hkeep & steady stream of engineers flowing into o u r industries.

Contrary to opinions expressed i n some quar­ters there has been no inflation in. enrollment in engineering colleges. * * * \n Octobe-r 1939 engineering enrollment was 46,000 while" today there are only 18,000 stuetea-ts in civilian status. We started this war with a shortage of technical men; the enrollment in colleges fcaas dec-reased; why should we further weaken ourael-ves by drafting much-needed persoinael?

Willard Gibbs Medal Jury

T h e Chicago Section o f th«*e A M E R I C A N C H E M I C A L S O C I E T Y recen t ly anuiouae^ed the election of new Wil lard Git>b3 Ju ro r s : Roger A d a m s , Univers i ty of Il l inois, or-ganieς S. D . Ki rkpa t r i ck , Chemical and JWelall^urgical Engineering, chemical engineering; Linus Paul ing , California I n s t i t u t e of Technology· physica l ; E d w a r d Do i sy . St. Louis Uni­versi ty , biochemical.

398 C H E M I C A L A N D E N G I N E E R I N G N E W S

Can You Afford