Category Archives: Science

Notes from the A.I. Meyers Symposium

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I was able to attend only the afternoon sessions of the AI Meyers Symposium, sponsored by the Chemistry Department at Colorado State University in Ft. Collins. Peter Beak from the University of Illinois spoke about organolithium chemistry related to CIPE- Complex Induced Prioximity Effect. Along the way, Beak made a few comments about the state of the science of chemistry in America in terms of the lack of a unified voice. He pointed out that the astronomers seem to be quite successful in geting major projects funded because they band together and make a unified case for funding. Beak observed that during difficult times, chemists tend to “circle the wagons and shoot inwards”.

Beak made another point about the perpetually weak state of physical organic chemistry. He suggests that the norbornyl cation controversy between H.C. Brown and Saul Winstein in the 1960’s had a deleterious effect on the field. I have heard this argument elsewhere. I can only assume that Beak means that funding for physical organic research dried up.

Victor Sniekus, Alfred Bader Professor of Chemistry at Queens University, spoke about his work with orthometallation in various projects. Daniel Comins, a Meyers post-doc, talked about alkaloid synthesis.  Much of the work from the Meyers labs was related to directed metallation or pre-coordination of R-Li with a substrate to accomplish some kind of selectivity. It was AIM’s habit to prove the merit of a transformation with an application to some kind of natural product synthesis- usually an alkaloid. I spent a year and a half struggling unsuccessfully with tylophorine and crypotpleurine.

The afternoon was rounded off with talk by Paul Reider, formerly a VP of Process Research at Merck and now teaching at Princeton University. Reider spoke in his typical entertaining manner.  What stands out above the technical details is a statement he made in regard to getting buy in for a process. He was trying to get somebody to try a reaction series-“I said it with such sincerity, they went ahead and did it! ” This is funny because you don’t get the idea that Reider or any of his colleagues are easily swayed by sincerity.

There was a fair turnout of Meyers alumni, post-docs and grad students as well as folks from other groups in the department.

X-Ray Emission from Office Supplies

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The recent (re-)discovery of x-ray emission from unwinding scotch tape under vacuum makes me wonder how this phenomenon might be used. It would be interesting to see the emission spectrum. No doubt the physics boys at UCLA are pumpin’ out patents like pellets out of the back end of a rabbit.

The researchers report that duct tape does not provide the same effect as 3M Scotch tape. From the International Herald Tribune–

The tape phenomenon could also lead to simple medical devices using bursts of electrons to destroy tumors. The scientists are looking to patent their ideas.

And finally, there’s the possibility of nuclear fusion. If the energy from the breaking adhesive could be directed away from the electrons to heavy hydrogen ions implanted in modified tape, the ions would accelerate fast enough so that when they collided, they could fuse together and give off energy — the same process that lights the sun.

Good God. We’re extrapolating this finding into solutions for the energy crisis and cancer already!

The UCLA folks say that the Russians reported x-ray emission from tape in 1953, but nobody believed them. Could be a novelty-buster.  Hmmm. I wonder if my Post-It notes will emit x-rays in vacuo too?

I’ll wager that at this very moment, a group of industrious Poindexters at two or three national weapons labs are trying to weaponize triboelectric x-rays. Project BIG STICKY.

Here is a “Novelty Buster” for the public domain– What would high Z additives in the tape composition do to the x-ray output? Seems to me that the heaviest atom naturally in Scotch tape would be silicon in the release backing layer. What if they grafted some heavy metal bearing monomers (metal chelates with a vinyl or other monomer moiety) into the composition somewhere? Would that affect the output spectrum?

Gaussling’s 9th Epistle to the Bohemians. The Cardinal of Chemistry

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In the fabulous world of industry there are many, many job descriptions held by many, many people. The practical consequence of this is that there are a great number of channels in which the river of your career can flow. Opportunities come and go like eddies in the stream. We advance and sometimes retreat.  Our enthusiasms can reach flood stage or can reduce to a trickle in draught. Our intentions can be muddy or clear.

In the end, though, all rivers run into the sea. Careers can flow narrow and fast or broad and slow. But the unique social status and circle we enjoy in this stream of time is eventually lost into the brackish waters of retirement. 

For academicians and industrialists alike, a PhD buys a seat as a lower level dignitary- a prince. For the academic prince, with hard work and luck, one rises through rank and tenure to become a lord or cardinal living the courtly life of intellectual privilege under the glow of eternal admiration. A prince of academe has but to walk into a classroom to gather the attention and fear of post-pubescent underlings. Through midterms, they hang on your every word. You are golden, and every year brings a new crop of young admirers.

In industry, the fierce hydraulic pressure of what-have-you-done-for-me-lately constantly tips the crown from your head. An industrial prince or princess can be expected to labor in a more diverse variety of capacities. Negotiating raw material prices, feasting with customers, or building a corporate trebuchet. Ominously, an industrial prince may find him/herself in oversight of activities that might one day be filmed by helicopters from a safe distance up wind.

An industrial prince can find himself suddenly in full battle dress swinging an axe from a wounded horse. The Viking warlords of mergers and aquisitions will storm the palace with their corporate siege engines and announce a restructuring of the kingdom. Programs throughout the principality will be halted. Serfs will lay down their scythes in the field and let the barley rot where it stands. Lesser princes will be sacrificed to Odin and upper middle-age cardinals will be sent to the moors in the north to live in sanctuary with the Brothers of Eternal Consternation.

What remains will be a thinner core of chastened cubicle-courtiers huddling behind the organizational battlements. Survivors of the siege. One day the new archbishops and cardinals will arrive in their red silk vestments during the antiphon, bearing their strange implements and unfamiliar liturgy. Thus begins a new age.

Atomic Testing Museum

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Th’ Gaussling took a quick trip to the Atomic Testing Museum this week. It is located on Flamingo Rd a few blocks east of the Las Vegas strip. Before entering I was dubious, wrongly thinking that it would be a thin gruel of well worn nuke photos and a few trinkets. I was wrong.

The museum is meant to chronicle the activity of the Nevada Test Site just a few miles to the north. There are numerous video units showing various shots.

They have a substantial collection of diverse equipment used in nuclear weapons testing as well as models of a few actual nuclear weapons, notably the Davy Crockett miniature nuclear bomb. There is very little in the way of bomb design detail, but there is considerable detail in regard to radiation sampling from the burst, drilling equipment, dosimeters, GM counters, a mushroom-cloud sampling rocket, slide rules, nuclear rocket motors, down-hole test rigs, etc.

The museum has a modest theater with special sound and wind effects to simulate being in close proximity of a test shot. They do a decent job. If the wind was hot, though, it would be more realistic. But in general, the application of museum science is well done.

If you are in the Las Vegas area, I would recommend a visit. The nuclear legacy is a part of our national history.  The Nuclear Genie is out of the bottle, but the people who write policies and devise programs need pushback from an educated populace in regard to the stewardship of the nuclear inventory and its expanded use.

Mole Day in the USA

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Happy Mole Day greetings from Th’ Gaussling! I’m presently in Las Vegas to serve as Parade Marshal for the Mole Day Extravaganza on Las Vegas Blvd. I’ll be riding in the honorary parade marshals car behind the Radio City Rockettes and the MIT chemistry faculty as we make our way through the ticker tape and the cheering throngs. The parade starts at 6:02 this evening and will progress to the wee hours.

NEP on Dust Explosion Hazards

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Earlier in 2008 OSHA issued directive CPL-00-008, Combustible Dust National Emphasis Program. This program is meant to induce industry to develop a greater awareness of dust explosion hazards via the threat of greater scrutiny by OSHA inspectors.

Dust explosion hazards have been poorly appreciated by plant operators in a wide range of industries. The recent explosion at Imperial Sugar in Port Wentworth, GA, on February 7, 2008, has helped to raise awareness both from regulators and plant operators. Part of the problem has to do with a poor understanding of the explosibility of dusts generally, and with the lack of data on the explosibility of a great many common products in particular. Safety consultants I know have been busy with clients from the sugar refining field. It caught their attention.

A.I. Meyers Symposium, 2008

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A symposium in honor of the late Professor Albert I. Meyers is being held at Colorado State University in Ft. Collins on Friday, 24 October, 2008, in the late afternoon and all day Saturday, 25 October, 2008. The symposium speakers are Clayton Heathcock, Peter Beak, Daniel Comins, Kyoshi Tomioka, Daniel Romo, Victor Snieckus, Jeff Seeman, and Paul Reider. I look forward to attending.

LoC Readers Predict 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry!

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Two reader/commenters who contribute sage commentary to this blog have predicted the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry– Jordan and Hap. Both predicted that Roger Tsien should or would win. Well done!

Naturally, Th’ Gaussling allowed his clairvoyance to be fogged over by sappy sentimentality for the (n+1)th time. My hat is off to these two savants and their predictve powers.

Oh yes, congratulations are in order for the 3 prize winners as well- Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie, and Roger Tsien. Golly, we can’t forget them.

Continuous Synthesis

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One of my great enthusiasms is the topic of small scale continuous synthesis. There has been some new thinking in this area recently. I don’t mean the use of robots to move material around- I mean continuous flow reactions. Our refinery friends have been doing this for a long time. It’s the reason gasoline isn’t $25/gallon. 

Many, if not most, supplies of bulk raw materials come from continuous process equipment. The economies of large scale may require custom reaction equipment dedicated to a given product. The problem for small scale production is the cost of custom designed equipmet is often large compared to the value of the production run. It is usually best to develop processes to operate in conventional, off-the-shelf pots & pans.

The availability of stirred tank reactors and their ease of use for small scale production has dominated the mode of specialty chemical process technology to the present day. Generations of chemists and engineers in fine and specialty chemicals know nothing other than batch reactor chemistry.

Easy, inexpensive continuous processing isn’t automaticaly suitable for every process. Transformations that are suitable for continuous flow processing may still be disqualitied by virtue of upstream or downstream processes that feed from or into transformations that must be done batchwise. There is the question of feed rates to and from the continuous transformative step and the extent to which non-continuous operations are compatible.

But back to basics. Why have continuous synthesizers at all in the small scale?  Why not just run the semi-batch process as may times as you need at the largest scale possible? Well, there is no reason not to. This is a tried and true business plan.  But what small scale continuous processing allows is the possibility of multiple parallel operations run by fewer staff. At the small scale, batch chemical production typically has a larger labor component than bulk or commodity scale production. Improvements to small scale process economics rests to a large extent on reducing the labor cost contribution.

By it’s nature, continuous processing is an intensified activity. The idea is to construct a minimum reactive volume and flow materials through the reaction or processing zone under intensified conditions for as short of a residence time as possible. At any given moment, there is a minimum mass of hazardous materials undergoing a potentially hazardous transformation. Or, intensification may mean the use of smaller ancillary equipment continuously, as in the case of continuous filtration vs batch filtration.

There are those who are making progress in this field. Recently I ran into a number of websites and files of Ashe Morris in the UK. These folks are operating a productive engine of development in regard to reactor design and innovative process chemistry improvemets. They have focused on process efficency and intensification. The question is, what shape will the IP take? Will users pay a royalty on their production or will it be limited to the purchase cost ofthe equipmet. How they do this will make all of the difference to the extent and rate of acceptance in the market.