THE CHEMICAL WORLD THIS WEEK

W. L. McCabe, AIChE president, presents the awards to: F. M. Tiller of Vanderbilt, who received the Junior Award; E. R.

Cilliland of MIT, the Professional Progress Award winner; and B. F. Dodge of Yale University, winner of the Walker Award

Lecturer Asks Further Fundamental Kinetics Research C&EN REPORTS: American Institute of Chemical Engineers' Meeting

COLUMBUS, OHIO.-Chemical engi­neers will have an additional publication to consult with the appearance early next year of the first volumes in the Chemical Engineering Progress Symposium Series. Final action was taken on the plan at the meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers here Dec. 3 to 6. First three in the series will appear almost simultaneously.

The first will be an amplification of the Second Institute Lecture on Applied Kinetics, presented by O. A. Hougen, Uni­versity of Minnesota, at the Columbus meeting. The second and third will con­tain papers from the symposia on phase equilibria, organized by Wayne Edmister of Carnegie Tech, and on ultrasonics, de­veloped by Dudley Thompson of Virginia, given at Columbus and earlier institute meetings. The series publications will be paper-backed volumes reproduced by photo-offset. They will be sold separately to members and others interested. Papers not published in the series books will be considered for publication in the AIChE publication, Chemical Engineering Prog­ress, as at present.

The fundamentalist theme was much in evidence in the addresses of the two featured speakers of the meeting. In the Second Institute Lecture, Hougen stressed the enormous work ahead before the field of kinetics can advance to the present status of heat transfer knowledge. "At what inventory the store of knowledge of kinetics becomes usable is not known," said the speaker, in commenting that the field corresponds to what we knew of heat transfer 30 years ago. At present, he continued, the engineer must be satis­fied with apparent rather than true mech­anisms. The job ahead can be judged by the fact that it took 30 years to eluci­date die true mechanism for the decom­

position of nitrogen dioxide. In the mean­time, the laboratory study of many reac­tions is so involved that pilot plant study is frequently cheaper. "It now is timely to deal with the chemical aspects of our profession."

The Professional Progress Award winner, E. R. Gilliland of MIT, found much to be desired in our present funda­mental knowledge even in the fields of heat and mass transfer that are usually considered so well developed. "We need a philosophy of no more packed towers," he asserted, in a tart attack on those who accept without question such common con­cepts as turbulence and film resistance that underly present treatment of the unit operations.

He warned that the physical chemists and physicists who have contributed many of the basic theories used for so long by the chemical engineers now have shifted much of their energies to other subjects, and suggested that more chemical engi­neers should apply themselves to funda­mentals.

Cilliland also voiced concern at the effect of government-sponsored research upon the development of fundamental knowledge in this country. He pointed out that governmental research and de­velopment expenditures were at least equal and perhaps double those of industry and the schools, and that they were channel­ized in certain fines. Commenting on the oft-heard statement that science is neu­tral, the speaker asserted that certain lines of research do have social implica­tions and questioned the wisdom of con­centrating such a large part of our re­search talents in lines now of interest to the Government. His misgivings were particularly strong, he said, because be has seen no attempt made by the Re­search and Development Board to attempt

any over-all survey of what it is trying to accomplish.

Thomas H. Chilton, technical director of the development engineering division of Du Pont, was elected president for 1951, and VV. I . Burt, vice president of the B. F. Goodrich Chemical Co., was elected vice president. New directors are C. R. Nelson of Shell Development, E. P. Stevenson of Arthur D. Little, R. C. Gunness of Standard Oil (Ind. ) , and R. P. Kite of the Dorr Co.

At the award banquet B. P . Dodge was announced as winner of the Walker Award for "outstanding contributions t o the literature of chemical engineering over the years," and especially for work on manu­facture of oxygen and for thermodynamic studies. F . M. Tiller, Vanderbilt, was chosen as the Junior Award winner for a paper "Efficiencies in Gas Absorption, Extraction and Washing." The A. Mc­Laren White Student Contest Award was won by Robert P. Bannon, University of Illinois, over 1,000 other contest entrants.

The technical program of the meeting contained 47 papers presented in 12 ses­sions. Symposia on air pollution control, ultrasonics, phase equilibria, processing of viscous materials, and chemical engi­neering in the glass industry were featured in addition to the general sessions.

Ultrasonics Significant progress toward further de­

velopment of ultrasonics as a practical engineering tool was evident in the paper by J. \V. Butterwoiih, Brush Development Co. The speaker described a barium titanate piezoelectric unit capable of de­livering one kilowatt of sonic energy. The design consisted of a mosaic of elements fchat could be assembled to pro­vide any total amount of sonic energy desired. Energy output of the elements is two watts per square centimeter, but by proper orientation of the elements the radiation can be focused to give 2,000 watts per square centimeter in the zone where sonic treatment is carried out. Two to 2.5 kilowatts of electrical energy, sup­plied at 60 volts, can be translated into a kilowatt of sonic energy in the bnxsh unit.

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THE CHEMICAL WORLD THIS WEEK

High interest was manifested in a paper by R. W. Samsel of GE who presented a "profile map" of the economic and practical limitations in the industrial ap­plication of ultrasonic energy. In a series of slides obviously based on an enormous volume of experimental research, Samsel defined the practical limits of frequency and intensity attainable by piezoelectric and mechanical methods of ultrasonic generation. The upper frequency attain­able now appears to be 10s cycles per second, the limitation being imposed be­cause it does not appear practical to make piezoelectric elements small enough to exceed this vibrational rate.

Two ultra-slow motion pictures were shown the audience that dramatically demonstrated the mechanism by which ultrasonic forces accomplished coagula­tion or emulsification in various systems. Other papers in the ultrasonics symposium showed how partial or total destruction of living organisms occurred in an ultra­sonic field. One interesting fact brought out was that gas must be present for effective depolymerization of polystyrene in toluene.

AEC's Health Physics The large factor of safety employed in

the health physics work of the AEC was brought out in discussion following the paper "Disposal of Radioactive Gases," by W. K. Eister and W. G. Stockdale, Oak Ridge, one of the seven contributions to the air pollution symposium. AEC tolerance limit is set at 10"8 microcuries per cubic centimeter, comparing with in­cidental radiation of 10"10 in pure air at sea level, about 10-t> in mountainous area, and 10-6 in some commercial fertilizers. Much attention was attracted to the paper "Performance of Industrial Aerosol Filters"

Air pollution sampling "goes up in the air" with Kytoons at Battelle

by Leslie Silverman, Harvard. Questions afterwards revealed industrial interest in the availability of the porous paper filter developed by Arthur D. Little, Inc.

New techniques developed for atmos­pheric studies above ground level were described by H. P. Munger, Battelle. Basic equipment was a Kytoon, a captive balloon design used during World War II to measure temperatures and relative humidity to 3,000 feet. With this equip­ment as a "sky hook," Battelle investi­gators brought air samples to ground level test equipment though polyethylene tub­ing for study of gaseous contaminants (rubber tubing proved too porous for use). Aerosols were sampled by a midget impinger suspended by the Kytoon and actuated by a vacuum line to the ground.

Ground-level studies of dispersion from short stacks were described by C. A. Gosline, Du Pont. Measurements were made in a radial pattern around an 80-foot stack and the results tested against equations proposed by other investigators. While the weighted average results showed best agreement with Sutton's formula, examination of individual data revealed no essential choice between the Sutton correlation and relationships proposed by several other investigators.

A series of five papers was given in the general session by W. R. Marshall, Jr., and coworkers at Du Pont, on drying

and atornization of drops. In quantitative studies that should be of major significance to those concerned with design of equip­ment for spray drying, the authors covered drying of drops and atornization with spinning disks and centrifugal pressure nozzles, and described an electronic drop-size analyzer. The authors reported that a tangential velocity of 20 to 80 feet per second was required for effective atorniza­tion in centrifugal pressure nozzles. Gen­eral mathematical expressions were de­veloped for calculation of drop size distri­bution, trajectory, _and power required in the atornization of liquids by spinning disks. Accuracy was ± 3 0 % adequate for design purposes.

A general equation applicable to the field of fluidization was presented by R. D. Tooniey and H. F. Johnstone, Illinois:

Y 1 Δ Ρ ^ V, In (KDp°*-k)APmj

volume of gas per unit time flow rate in the continuous phase, cu ; ft./sec. constants particle diameter in feet kinetic energy loss pressure drop at incipient fluidization

The authors tested the data of other investigators and found they fitted the equation.

where: V

K,k DP APk,

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