Category Archives: Chemistry

The Flame of Innovation

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It is amazing how delicate the innovative impulse is.  Like most brain related activities, innovation is a use-it-or-lose-it kind of affair.  Innovative folk can be inspired by management to go forth and devise products that will keep the company afloat 5 years from now. They can also be contradicted or neglected by management and as a result the innovative flame can extinguish.

It is not unusual for organizations to go to the considerable expense of hiring research chemists yet not let them do what, ostensibly, they are best at- developing new art.  New art can lead to new goods and services, or it can lead to more cost efficient approaches to existing product.  Research chemists can also capture the nuance of a given process, leading to a better understanding of quirks and diagnostic signals.

Or not.

It is quite possible for a company to be run by people who have no interest or ability to use a research chemist in a broadly productive way. In my experience, it is not uncommon for chemists to be hired on to perform a very narrow range of activities. A wise chemist in the job market should be alert to the possibility that their creativity will not actually be sought by the employer. Rather, the chemist might become just a mechanical arm for some character whose ambitions may not include you.

Research is very expensive and the wary R&D chemist should always have an ear to the ground to listen for the galloping horse of the axeman.  Some organizations have a policy of spending a certain fraction of the proceeds on R&D every year. Others are more project or product line oriented and staff-up or staff-down as the circumstance requires.  R&D resources may get re-jiggered when a project changes. It is always best to be on a winning project that management is enthusiastic about.  Dark horse projects are prone to being jettisoned at the first sign of trouble.

Keeping it fresh

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On occasion I have the chance to do what I really dig- running some new chemistry with the stereo cranked up high.  It can be Joe Green (Verde), Stevie Ray Vaughn, Eric Clapton, or Prairie Home Companion- I don’t care. Th’ Gaussling does love the blues. Opera, surprisingly, is a recent taste.

One circumstance when I can’t listen to tunes is when I’m reading patents- I need all of the focus I can get. I do have an unhealthy interest in patents and patent law. If you are so afflicted, I would recommend visiting the websites of a few law schools like George Mason University Law School. I would also highly recommend the website Patently-O.  The size of the patent law business is amazing. And make no mistake, it is a business.

Anyway, back to the lab.  I spent today doing what turned out to be a fairly tight fractional distillation.  Of course, this gave me an excuse to do GCMS. I love to work out fragmentation patterns in a pathetic effort to understand the side products. A long time ago I invested in McLafferty’s book on mass spec and it was a good investment.  A large number of folks place heavy reliance on the mass spec library on the computer.  If you’re bringing new materials to market, this resource may be of little value.

After a day of watching product drip, drip, drip, I am decompressing with a glass of Old Chubb. Pretty good stuff.

High Purity Life

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The world of ppm and lower detection thresholds is a confusing labyrinth of assumptions, equipment quirks, and a place where you definitely can’t confuse accuracy with precision. All of those lovely 9’s queued to the right of the decimal place. I do so want to believe what I see. But so often they are from a tight cluster of bullets away from the bullseye.

For those who must tread in this arcane world, I can only recommend that you find a good analytical lab and get to know the analysts well.  They can fill you in on the sorry truth of sub-ppm detection and quantitation.

The trinity of ICP , quadrapole, and the Blessed Dynode allow access to the innermost ring of analytical hell.  At the sub-ppm level, most of the periodic table begins to stand out of the background. Once apparently pristine material, like a trailer park divorcee, suddenly reveals a sordid history.  Pick your method and stick to it. If you go nosing around with other methodologies, you may be in for a disheartening picture. 

Precautionary Principle or Precautionary Anxiety

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Our technological culture is slipping into a kind of Nanny State where risk aversion has become institutionalized at all levels.  Much of this trend has to do with the Precautionary Principle. I won’t elaborate on it because it well presented elsewhere. 

My concern with the Precautionary Principle is not because I have dismissed the threats of deforestation or extinction or global warming. My concern is not because I believe we should freely and wantonly expose people to chemcials substances.  I am concerned about the effect of this principle on innovation.  I believe it is possible and necessary to maintain our technological advance while minimizing the total environmental insult.

In regard to chemistry, innovation is being made far more difficult because of precautionary anxiety.  Part of the issue is fear of chemicals, or what some have called Chemophobia. Chemophobes know in their heart that “chemicals” are bad. 

Chemophobia is real.  Chemophobia derives from a lack of understanding of the chemical sciences and the meaning of risk.  To the chemophobe, any “chemical” odor is a prelude to cancer or other illness.  Bad smell equals toxic.  Good smell equals safe. However, such conclusions are easily toppled when you consider manure and phosgene. Manure is foul smelling, but not especially toxic. Phosgene is fragrant but highly toxic. Stink and toxicity correlate poorly and are a weak basis to judge safety.

We need to keep safety in a proper perspective. We need to have places where we can handle hazardous chemicals for research and manufacturing. The process of education will filter out those who are uncomfortable with the risks and produce those who are willing to work in such places in order to advance science. Students who have an interest in chemical sciences need to have the chance to work with reactive chemicals without undue constraint. Yes, they need to be in a lab and under the supervision of a trained mentor.  But students need to get experience working with reactive materials in order to develop judgement.

The Aldrich Distribution Machine

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It was interesting to note in the recent C&EN report on the Top 50 chemical companies that among the most profitable was Sigma-Aldrich (SIAL), or colloquially, Aldrich.  Sigma-Aldrich controls an expanding complex of companies all targeted for more specialized domains of chemical technology.  Anyone who has received an invoice from Aldrich would not find their profitability surprising.   But what most customers may not realize is the extent of relatively transparent infrastructure that has been put into place to enable this profitability. 

Aldrich is not profitable merely because their prices are, well, high. Aldrich is profitable for some subtle reasons as well. Easiest to recognize is their shrewd choice of market.  Aldrich’s customer list includes nearly every research and academic chemistry and biology department in much of the world, or at least anywhere FedEx delivers. What is important about the R&D market is certainly not the volume of chemicals each research group orders- 5 g here, 100 g there, a liter of this, or 50 mL of that.  Rather, it is the constant buzz of orders coming in for premium grade (and premium priced) chemicals virtually all of the time.  While each order may be modest relative to bulk chemical transactions, a constant stream of orders begins to add up. 

What is shrewd about focusing on the R&D supply market is this:  Over time R&D money is relatively constant. The big academic and institute money is federal in origin and as such tends to be reliable in supply. Out in the world, projects start and projects end continuously.  It may not be reliable to an individual researcher, but overall, the monies are dispersed every year and someone out there gets them. So from a marketing view, the players in the game may change, but the spring of money flows every year.

Other people develop the Next Big Thing and SAFC supplies the raw materials. Just like the gold rush. A few miners hit a big strike. But the more reliable money came from selling supplies to the miners.

As I alluded above, Aldrich charges a premium price for its products and, to my knowledge, has never discounted its wares.  It offers a valuable service and is unapologetic about how it does business.  Any given product in the catalog has a substantial markup on it. I think that many people find this galling when they compare 25 g unit prices to bulk prices.  But I would caution that there is a substantial and unrelenting cost associated with having certified quality material prepackaged and waiting on a shelf in some warehouse.

It’s easy to get bulk pricing- buy in bulk!

A bottle of maleic anhydride sitting on the shelf is functionally equivalent to cash sitting in a bottle.  You have to pay up front to have material in inventory and the cash or credit used to buy the inventory could have been used to do other things. It could have been given to Warren Buffett for investment or to the stockholders.  Management has a fiduciary responsibility to the stockholders. It is to provide the best possible return on stockholders investment.

Another hidden talent of Aldrich is logistics and distribution. Getting things to where they should be on time does not happen easily. Much of Aldrich’s success depends on its ability to move product into and out of inventory rapidly and accurately. On the input side, purchasing, receiving, quality control, manufacturing, and warehousing are highly organized to assure that orders can be fulfilled when the time comes.

When the order does arrive, the business data system has to issue the right part number from inventory and be assured that there is no shelf life problem that would disqualify the product for sale.  Any chemical product must have a certificate of analysis, an MSDS, and be available in the right unit configuration, or SKU- stock keeping unit.

Order fulfillment involves entry of the purchase order into the data system, issuance of a work order to obtain the material, pulling the SKU from the inventory data base, and sending the order to shipping for final containerizing for land, sea, or air shipment.  Here, the product must be packed in a way to conform with DOT and IATA regulations.  Shipping documents must be packed, boxes placarded, and the parcels must get onto a truck for delivery.  Foreign deliveries are complicated by customs issues, which often include inspection and import duties. Customs clearance is a subspecialty in the shipping world.

In many ways, making the chemical is the easiest part.  Getting clean product is just the beginning of the adventure in product distribution.

Growth occurs by acquiring new brand loyalty and by expansion of the collection of products. One stop shopping for lab supplies.  The “80/20 rule” applies to such collections of products. This rule  of thumb states that 20 % of your products do 80 % of the business.  Chances are good that this ratio is even more skewed than 80/20. 

So, one way to grow is to expand the collection size. This ensures that as much demand is covered with product as possible.

Another way to grow is to dial in annual price increases- say 5-7%. This renders the prices in the catalog obsolete soon after they are distributed, but that is unlikely to be fatal to any given buying decision. 

Uncle Merck and Aunt Lilly

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According to the November 26, 2007 C&EN, Merck has for a second time engaged the Indian firm NPIL to develop cancer drugs for two targets that they have disclosed. Merck will have the option to buy rights to the compounds, providing they successfully get through Phase IIa of clinical trials. The article discloses that Eli Lilly has made a similar agreement.

It is disappointing to see companys like Merck and Lilly outsourcing their R&D. I do not intend to besmirch NPIL. They have obviously crossed a threshold in their own R&D activity that meets the standard of major league pharma. But I do believe that Merck and Lilly deserve some scolding for outsourcing R&D.

R&D is one of the remaining activities for which the US maintains a bit of an edge. It is our magic.  To accelerate the development of R&D expertise in India is to act against our self interest as a country. India will eventually develop this capability on their own- why help? Drug discovery is an art that should be jealously guarded by a company. To farm it out to a hard working developing country with lower overhead rates is ultimately foolhardy. Even though some particular art is protected, this activity is always stimulates a company.

Lucky India. They get to exploit advanced technology without having to have paid for 100 years of R&D. Instead of having to pay to develop synthetic chemistry, they can plug and chug with a newly educated populace and access to the literature.

And who paid for the universities and the NIH post-doctoral fellowships and the research assistantships for grad students who developed and published the technology and who became the scientists whom Merck hired? Take a guess.

Investors may reap near term gains and Merck may get a better market foothold in India. Some executives will look like bloody geniuses. The presidents and CEO will prattle on over brunch about bringing home shareholder value. But when R&D goes the way of garment manufacture and automobiles, these “heroes” will be retired to their gated community in Palm Springs. In the end, they have eroded the competitiveness of the USA in an aggressive and contentious market.

Thumbs down to Merck and Lilly.

Person of Gender

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Some years ago, my first real job out of my post-doc was a one year teaching stint at a Catholic womens college.  The post-doc was rather less than a great experience. But that is a post for another time. I did get a couple of JACS papers, a Mendeleev Communications paper, a divorce, and one Org Synth publication out of it. And, I got to work with some smart folks I still consider to be among my closest friends.

The post-doc years were a time of deep personal turmoil. The divorce was traumatic. It affects one in ways that are hard to appreciate in advance. Mostly, it presents an indelible stamp of failure to the bearer.  If it weren’t for friends that I made while in Texas, frankly I don’t know where I’d be today.  The adage “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” does have some truth in it.

The Catholic school I taught in was associated with a major football presence in the midwest. The womens college was run by the same group of nuns who were connected with the coed university across the street so venerated by football enthsiasts. It had its own exit from the toll road, two lakes, two golf courses, and a mosaic of the Saviour declaring a touchdown. 

I bought furniture from Father Clarence and slept on a priest bed (without the priest, blessedly) for my academic year under the employ of nuns. Such furniture was typically donated back for eventual resale. Father Clarence offered to sell me the two 35 mm projectors used to entertain the revered Four Horsemen. Like an idiot, I declined his offer and regret it to this day.

The nuns who ran this single gender institution were an aging population. Initiates were hard to find- apparently most came from South America. The Blessed Sisters eventually handed off the university so they could concentrate on their hospitals.

Even though I received paychecks from the Sisters, I rarely saw them. We did have a nun from a different order in our department.  She was a pistol. And a biochemist. Her interest was infecting caterpillars with deadly caterpillar viruses. Strange game, this. Our Dean was a hoot- she looked and sounded just like Ethel Merman.

I taught a class of 95 students, all women. I recall looking out into a crowd of 19-22 year old women, most with poney tails protruding out from the back of baseball caps and peering at me under bills that were severely curled.   It was a general chemistry for non-majors section populated by students who couldn’t get into biology or the popular “physics for poets” class. These hapless students ended up with me as a prof.  What rotten luck.

One morning driving into work I was in a serious auto accident where I nearly rolled over my pickup. The patrolman graciously dropped me off at the college where I ran to the classroom 10 minutes late. Not a single one of the vicious little trolls waited for me to arrive. (After all, it says somewhere in the new testament that a student only has to wait 5 minutes for the prof.)

I took over a class previously taught by a fellow who had just died. His office was closed and untouched by a disinterested family. It was an odd experience- he was fresh in everyones mind except for mine. 

The main recollection I have from the experience is that perhaps 1/3 of the students I knew were genuinely dismayed that men taught at the University. They would point out that it made no sense for a women’s institution to have male faculty. As a “person of gender”, it was hard for me to disagree. But I would also point out that of the remaining 2/3 that I spoke with, half were uncertain about the wisdom of attending an all womens institution. So, for me it is hard to draw conclusions about the merit of single gender institutions. From a marketing view, there is/was demand for this kind of school. But whether demand is from parents or students is less clear to me.

Getting product out the door

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Manufacturing is all about getting product onto a truck and watching it leave the gates of the plant. Because after the shipping documents are given to the driver, the invoicing begins.  This is a very time sensitive action.  The customer can’t pay until the invoice is received and the 30-days-net countdown begins.

It is deeply satisfying to package a chemical product that you have prepared with your hands and your wits.  I find the act of packaging product after it has passed QA appproval to be my favorite part of the process. It also means that I can start something new.  Rarely does one hear anything from the customer if the product is satisfactory.  The only time you hear from the customer is when something has gone wrong.

The bean counters will render the process into some bland abstraction that has inputs and outputs. They’ll yammer on about ROI and earnings before taxes, interest, and … whatever.  I’m glad to see that the MBA’s learn something in business school besides how to manage their IRA’s. But there is more to business than the electronic transfer of funds.

What really matters to me is that I did something useful this day. It matters that my hand-made product is useful to someone else and performs as required. Making things and stuff contributes to the ongoing process of civilization.  I feel sorry for the pure finance people.  They don’t know the satisfaction of isolating a water-white product in 99 % purity and slapping a label on the bottle and giving it to the shipping folks. I still get a  kick out of it.

Carbonylated Surf and Turf

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As a desperate strategy to fight insomnia, Th’ Gaussling often finds himself watching C-Span at 1 AM.  Congressional testimony or a televised speech at the International Museum Docent Convention by the Acting Assistant Deputy Undersecretary of the Stratosphere is often enough to initiate somnolence.

But early this morning was different. A panel of FDA administrators were before a House Committee on Commerce Chaired by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Michigan. At issue was H.R. 4167, the National Uniformity for Food Act. Apparently, the proposed law will remove requirements for certain kinds of food labeling, in particular the presence of certain additives may not be part of manditory labeling.

What has come to light is the industrial practice of exposing meats and fish to an atmosphere of dilute carbon monoxide (CO, ca 0.4 %) in order to maintain a red color in the flesh.  Meat naturally turns brown on exposure to air over a short period. Industry has been wrestling with this for a long time, adopting and subsequently abandoning various schemes for maintaining the reassuring red color of meats and certain fish. Carbon monoxide coordinates with iron in haemoglobin to afford a complex that renders the tissues red in color. The FDA defines CO as a fixative in this application, rather than a preservative.

As a result of the use of this scheme, it is possible to keep meats and fish with a saleable red appearance for much longer. This reduces store losses due to the non-marketability of brown meat.

The House Commerce Committee was split down the isle in terms of its concern for this matter. Democratic committee members voiced considerable concern over the subterfuge of artificially reddening meat, allowing unwary consumers to falsely conclude that the meat could be fresher than it really is. Republican members seemed disinterested in the matter and several voiced concern that the FDA should spend it’s time with Salmonella rather than CO. The honorable Republican member from Kentucky tried to suggest that as a “simple country doctor”, he was having trouble understanding the issues and pronouncing the words (Rep. Elmer T. Bonehead, R-KY).

Whereas many of the members soft pedaled their questions, Rep. John Dingell, D-Michigan, offered no quarter to the FDA group. In particular he focused his attention of Director of Food Additive Safety, Laura Tarantino.  In earlier testimony, Tarantino was a picture of confidence. Her knowledge of the statutes and the Byzantine procedural details as well as her confidence and instant recall was impressive. However, when Dingell’s time for questions came along, he went after her with rapid fire questions, not allowing time for her to qualify her answers or fend off subtext.  “Just answer the question, yes or no”. It was interesting to see.  Dingell was obviously disgusted with the FDA.  The regulations and protocols that govern FDA movement are very complex and apparently even the administrators have faint grasp on much of it.

Director Tarantino stated that no specific rule-making concerning CO fixatives had been completed because it was still under study.  The working assumption was that CO was considered GRAS- Generally Recognized as Safe. These assumptions are often advanced by industry and accepted with scant examination by FDA.

When asked about the general safety of CO in the product, one FDA manager stated that the added CO posed no hazard. I have no reason to doubt this. But the real issue is consumer deception. I think even libertarians would have to agree that without disclosure of food additives, the market cannot rationally award its demand to preferred providers. You can bank on the notion that consumers are particular about meat and freshness. HR 4167 is a step backwards for consumers and we can only hope that good sense prevails in the House.

Evonik Absorbs Degussa

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Another venerable corporate identity has been rendered obsolete.  Evonik Industries AG has acquired Degussa to form what they call the Chemicals Business Area. Evonik has interest in energy and real estate as well.

It always surprises me to see a buyout that includes the retirement of an entire corporate identity. It’s the same with Union Carbide or Hoechst AG (now Aventis). There is so much name recognition with company’s like this that I really wonder what the rationale is for the change.

I recall one evening at a bar in Houston we were drinking with some Degussa business develpment guys after a tedious day at a conference. After listening to these German guys griping about American drivers, I took a sip of my gin and tonic and asked the question-

“So, was there a founder named Herr Degussa somewhere, sometime in the past?” They looked at me for a moment and then began to laugh. Turns out that the word Degussa  comes from “Deutsch Gold and Silver” in some fashion.  Or, so they said.

Best wishes to the good folks at (former) Degussa in their new adventure.