Golly. I was surprised to learn that the systematic IUPAC name for OH2 is Oxidane. Check out Table 2.1 Mononuclear Hydrides in this IUPAC nomenclature recommendations document. And to think, I’ve been calling it “water” all these years. How embarrassing.
The chemical business environment is changing in some ways that, I fear, add even more disadvantage to small chemical manufacturers. The regulatory sphere is closing in on our chemical manufacturing industry like shrink wrap around a gutted salmon. Whereas it was once straightforward to bring a new chemical product to the B2B market, now we have TSCA and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) placing complex obstacles in the road.
TSCA compliance for non-listed compounds requires that process details be disclosed for screening and hazard modeling by EPA workers. Unless the EPA finds some compelling environmental or worker exposure issue that requires further consideration, a new compound is allowed.
Operating unsafely is a poor business model. Civil litigation and insurance pressures are usually enough to motivate a plant operator to conduct safe practices. Regardless, if you’re in the business of breaking trail in developing new chemical entities, waiting for allowance by EPA necessitates starting the development timeline up to a full quarter in advance. TSCA filing also starts an audit trail that, for the unwary, can lead to a filing cabinet full of discoverable documents that can return to haunt you. TSCA is powerful code and it is one of the larger hammers that the government wields.
Before the chemical regulatory epoch began in earnest, chemical processing merely delt with the forces of the market and of nature. Corrosives, flammable liquids, runaway reactions, foreign competition, etc. That was dangerous enough and required the full attention of many experts.
Today, in addition to chemical hazards we have administrative hazards that require specially trained staff and, naturally, lawyers. Law office charges to document compliance may cost as much per hour as a whole shift of operators for a medium scale process line.
The federal government is beginning to impose itself more strongly in the operations of chemical plants. Part of this is in response to international terrorism. Like children sitting in a darkened room telling ghost stories, federal regulators have stirred themselves into a twitter. Apparently, they have developed fault trees that line out the universe of consequences from attack scenario’s on our chemical industrial infrastructure. Code has been written and passed by the congress, signed by the president, and embraced by the suffocating bosom of the Department of Homeland Security. Woe is he who runs afoul of these people. Their para-military authority and zeal is what makes me uncomfortable.
If only we could be so analytical and systematic about invading and destabilizing prickly iron-age cultures on the other side of the world.
Of course, one cannot entirely fault the government for trying to apply the Precautionary Principle. It seems so sensible. But the eternal question is, what are the thresholds for action? Where safe meets sorry is also where the rubber meets the road. How much more industry are we going to chase to Asia?
On the non-security side, Europe has adopted REACH. I’m trying not to be a Chicken Little, but before the US adopts this approach to environmental regulation, we should study the suite of unintended consequences that will surely arise from this regulatory framework. The EU is breaking trail for us and we should pay attention.
Th’ Gaussling was interested to learn of an obscure author detailing an alternative and systematic nomenclature of the elements of the periodic table. The book is “Chemistianity“, by J. Carrington Sellars, F.C.S., printed in 1873. The link provided is part of a larger chemical etymology website authored by historian Peter van der Krogt called Elementymology & Elements Multidict.
Chemistry is such a large field and so rich in detail and history that we may forget how much struggle occured to give us even the most basic of concepts. The science of chemistry largely rests on the behaviour of valence electrons confined to oddly shaped patches of 3-space called orbitals. The nuclei set up the charge fields, but the chemistry is in how the electrons behave. It is the electrons that we manipulate in the laboratory to afford the wonderful spectum of chemical substances.
What is astonishing is the number of technologies and the extent of groundwork that had to overlap in order for our now cherished quantum/electronic theory of chemistry to arise. A long line of chemists like Berzelius had to produce and characterize new elements so Mendeleev could chart the patterns and predict new elements. Other workers would fill in the gaps.
Some new blogs have appeared on my radar. One is the Spinneret. It is not so much a blog, perhaps, as a news magazine and resource nexus. You can leave comments attached to the post just like a blog, but the writer is reporting chemistry related news.
ChemSpy.com collects news feeds from popular chemistry sources. The subtitle says “The internet navigator for the chemical industry”. Check out the library of tutorials.
Over at Depth First, the writer offers a great tip on finding structures from CASRN’s for free. Cruise around the site. There is a lot of interesting work happening in the Chemical Informatics field.
Reactive Reports labels itself as a Chemistry WebMagazine, and that certainly seems to be what it is. It takes a fairly large amount of effort to produce such a thing. Looks like they have enough visitors to attract a sponsor.
On this magical day 50 years ago, Th’ Gaussling was born into the world. Yes, I am a 9/11 baby and today is L-Day. Remember your Roman numerals? Once a perfectly respectable though bland day of the year, 9/11 has become the new Pearl Harbor Day. Everybody remembers where the hell they were 9/11/01. I turned 44 that day.
To celebrate this day, we decided to do an unusual thing. We went uranium prospecting. I borrowed a Geiger Counter and we headed up to the mountains near Idaho Springs. A few weeks back in a chance encounter with a retired hard rock miner, I learned of an old mine that was allegedly dug with the hope of finding uranium. Looking like a thousand other abandoned mines, this mine has been silent for many years. [Sidebar: This fellow didn’t look like Gabby Hayes, though his chums certainly do. Hardrock mining is a tough business.]
Our miner seemed credible. When asked, he did know about pitchblende and other uranium-bearing ore deposits in the area. He said that there used to be a “big operation over that ridge over there” (pointing east). The miner was very cautious about giving too many details. Most people asked him about gold, so his curiosity about me was piqued when I starting drilling into the particulars of uranium. Mining is a very secretive business. Gold fever is real but other metals will cause this enchantment as well.
So, we pulled along side the narrow dirt road this morning with sample bags and a GM counter. This model is a survey meter with a thin metal (aluminum) window protecting the GM tube. So, we could not pick up alpha’s at all and probably very few beta’s- just gamma’s for the most part. Given the penetrating ability of gamma radiation, with it’s low ionization aptitude, a large fraction of the gamma’s sail through the tube undetected.
At our home along the Front Range of Colorado, the meter will pick up maybe 8-15 counts of background radiation per minute on average. Cosmic rays, solar radiation, and radiation sources from the rock and soil make up the background rate.
Scrambling over the mine tailings, we found sporadic upticks in the count as the detector approached the pile. Overall the detectable radiation was qualitatively 3-5 times the background rate found at home. The counter (which is calibrated) rarely indicated higher than 0.1 MR/hr. While the mine tunnel was open, I declined to enter, prefering to work on the tailings pile.
While there is clearly radioactive material in the mine tailings, the sum total of the radioactive species seemed quite low. Of course, I do not know what the situation is with the alpha emitters. No individual rock was even remotely hot. The GM tube near the ground was picking up the sum of all the emissions in the area.
It would seem that the miner was partially right about the mine. They might have been digging for uranium, but it would appear that they did not find much of it, given the lack of development and the apparent lack of significant radioactivity in the tailings.
This was a big day for Th’ Gaussling. The new business unit I have been developing sent it’s first in-house chemical product out the door. Okay, it was a modest 25 grams of specialty product. But for the first time the cash has started to flow the other direction. We are reworking our catalog operation for faster and better service while taking advantage of bulk production by another division for better economy. Watch out, Aldrich! \;-)
Doing chemical synthesis is easy compared to inventing a custom business architecture; especially one that has to be compatible with other systems, yet bringing improvements forward. It is like doing a reaction that requires 12 molecules (dodeca-molecular?) to collide simultaneously- We call it “getting buy-in”. To start a new business unit in a company, you have to get buy-in from accounting, IT, analytical services, quality control, upper management, shipping and receiving, production, R&D, etc. Lots of skeptical folks need to be assured that you’re not going to complicate their lives, threaten their careers, or create accounting hazards.
Business architecture amounts to the work flow mechanisms necessary for order fulfillment. If an order comes in, how do you go about filling it and getting product to the customer while ensuring profitability, regulatory compliance, safety, and a comprehensive web of accounting relationships? Every product has to be a discrete entity that has branched audit trails- costing, analytical, raw material lot #’s, and business intelligence. Every product must have an up to date MSDS, specifications, certificate of analysis, and a manufacturing procedure that does not require a PhD to make it. Well, that last one is a more nebulous goal.
I now have a more visceral appreciation for all the work that has gone on behind the scenes at the major chemical catalog companies. A lot of work goes into every single product entry. Every product has a trail of raw material specs, finished goods specs, and specific analytical test methods. Record keeping must be up to the task. It takes a lot of different skill sets besides savvy with chemicals to operate a chemical company.
Over the past few months I have been trying to accumulate synthetic procedures for simple compounds of several elements. F-block elements whose chemistries are comparatively obscure at best. I have scoured the web with all sorts of search term combinations, looking for content that may be available. Except for links to major publishers wanting to sell me article downloads for $30 to $45 each, that faucet was dry.
SciFinder was surprisingly dry as well. Journal articles appeared touting some obscure p-chem work or Raman IR study. Interesting work to be sure, but the bibliographies were absent the key words I was looking for. Complicating matters, many of the early SciFinder listings were from Russian or Chinese publications that were in the native language and available through interlibrary photocopying. It was clear that SciFinder would only be of help if I wanted to open up a big vein for a major cash bleed by purchasing articles blindly.
So, I left work early and went to a nearby university library for some swimming in the deeper waters of knowledge. Within 2 hours I found much of the information I was looking for, and through the miracle of browsing, I blundered into a rich vein of information I probably wouldn’t of thought to have asked for.
If you ask for help in a library, you’ll often get the question: “What are you looking for?” It is a fair question. A librarian is there to help patrons find information. But, very often, a seeker of knowledge sets out with a poor idea of exactly what the best questions are. Some are searching for facts while others search for concepts. It is only by culling through a body of knowledge that one can begin to frame questions that make sense. The best questions give the best answers. Perhaps the librarian should ask if the patron actually knows what they want and drill in from there.
The pursuit of knowledge is not like going to the pharmacy and pulling a prepackaged unit off the shelf. The pursuit of knowledge puts you squarely in front of a problem where the actual struggle begins. Learning is about integrating concepts into your consciousness, and that involves struggle. If you are not willing to struggle with an idea, then you’re not really committed to learn something new.
Too often we go to the library to get answers when instead we should be seeking better questions. I was seeking facts but instead found that my assumptions concerning how certain reactions proceeded was fundamentally in error. I have had to recalibrate my expectations as a result.
Epilog: So, I did my seeking and found some books to check out. At the circulation desk the nice young lady told me that they had no record of me and that I would have to plop down a $75 fee to check books out from the state university library. Luckily I was able to shut my mouth and walk away to fulminate in private.
While scanning a copy of Nuts & Volts, I happened on an ad by Ramsey Electronics. This ad featured several electronics kits, one of which was the Laser Lght Show, # LLS1. I ordered a kit and assembled the thing in about 6 hours.
Basically, an optical path is set up wherein a laser beam reflects off of two variable speed motors with mirrors and a speaker with a mirror to provide a sound modulated Lissajous pattern. Lissajous (Wikipedia) patterns are an exercise in signal mixing. Off-axis sinusoidal waves can be mixed electronically (see link) or optically as with this kit. The kit has a jack to feed audio to the speaker. I have not had a chance to feed in audio just yet- need to open up a cheapo radio and do some minor surgery.
It is satisfying to build things now and then. This activity stems from to my basic belief that one can never know too much about electronics. And, it’s fun.
There is an interesting PPT download from the archives of the 231st ACS national meeting concerning the use of the weblog format in project management. The presentation was by Randy Reichardt, an engineering librarian at the University of Alberta, Edmonton. The university offers what they call uSpace as an in-house blogging venue for its students. uSpace is a university service under Elgg, an open source blogging platform.
The slide show summarizes a project executed by an engineering class. Communication between participants centered on the use of a blog. The blog was a kind of nexus used to centralize information related to the project as well as provide an archive to capture events and progress in the project.
Slide #8 has some useful advice issued by the professor-
3. Check your personal issues at the door. This means personal problems, prejudices, wierd/offensive senses of humor, tears (in general, men find this very threatening and difficult to deal with), and aggression (in general, women find this very threatening and difficult to deal with). It is never a good idea to (cry, lose your temper, or backstab) at work. DO bring a sense of fun, a sense of humor, enthusiasm for the project, and commitment to your team members as human beings. Great teams remember to play together as well as working hard together.
4. Figure out what you’re good at – and do it.
Use of a blog as a central repository of information and connectivity is a brilliant idea. The only snag I can think of is access. For college coursework a medium level of security is satisfactory, but for the exchange of IP and confidential information, storing sensitive information on an off-site data storage system may not be the best option. Access must be secure from unauthorized outside parties. Perhaps Elgg offers this capability? [Editors note: a commentor below suggests this is not an issue]
Reichardt mentions other topics of great importance in the PPT show. Namely, access to database features and the transfer of information via RSS feeds. I’m not fluent in this technology, so I will have to be silent on this matter.
The beauty of this approach to project management is that meetings can be held on a continuous or ad-hoc basis without having to schedule interruptive and unproductive meetings where much time and energy is spent presenting updates. People tend to be more precise in their comments if they write them down. Writing in a blog format could have the benefit of more cogent and precise input by team members as well as increased accountability to the group.
According to the August 27, 2007 issue of C&EN, page 29, the EPA says that the toxicology data on tetrahydrofuran show “suggestive evidence of carcinogenic potential”. The cited document can be found at this link.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens as a result of this study. It is understatement to say that THF is a mighty important solvent. More than a few important processes require this cyclic ether. Perhaps this is how Methyl THF makes its appearance to a wider audience? But in doing so it will only attract the attention of toxicologists.
With REACH and the EPA’s reexamination of many substances in current use, there is likely to be an extended shakeup coming for US chemical processors in the next 5-10 years. What the rest of us have to reconsider is what constitutes acceptable risk. It’s time for that old aphorism- “A ship in harbor is safe. But that is not where ships are meant to be.”
The hardest problems to deal with seem to be the low signal-to-noise ratio phenomena- low level radiation, low level pollution, trace levels of this or that in the working environment. Most likely, acceptable THF exposure levels will come way down and the material will stay in use. That’s my guess.
Lamentations on Chemistry 