Category Archives: Science

Chemical Plant Production Managers

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I have known a few plant production managers at several facilities in my career and they seem to share particular attributes. No doubt they fall into a particular Myers-Briggs type.  I can say without a doubt that I am personally disqualified from such activity because I tend to be more of the absentminded professor type.   It takes a certain breed of cat to manage any kind of production facility.  Indeed, your average construction site superintendant is probably better suited to manage a chemical plant than is a chemist. 

Well, OK. That was a bit harsh.  Many chemists could do it if they had to. But if you owned a chemical company and were looking for a new plant manager, you’d probably find that the pool of candidates didn’t include many chemists. There, that is more polite.  Chemists are often tweakers by nature and a chemical plant is not a place for experiments. Plant managers live by the production schedule. They are both masters of and slaves to this schedule.  Their whole careers are about the coordination of material flows- the arrival of raw materials, processing, and the logistics of shipping.

A chemical plant is a big machine through which flows a large stream of money.  Money flows in one side of this machine and out the other side.  Jets of cash flow outward to payroll and raw material vendors. The production manager never forgets that the inflowing stream must always be bigger than the outflowing stream.  Customers insist on just-in-time delivery of products, but they also want 60 days net with a lot of other strings.  The relationship between the controller and the plant manager may be chronically strained.

People who run production plants are really engineers, irrespective of whether or not they hold a diploma in engineering.  Scientists find the thread between cause and effect.  Engineers take that thread and figure out how to use it for fun and profit. Sure, some scientists have engineering sense and some engineers have scientific sense.  But a plant manager is all about running the plant at full speed. When they make tweaks, it is usually on the engineering side.  Usually they are loath to alter chemistry.

In the Navy they have a saying- Fight the Ship.  Use every part of the boat to your advantage.  Slap ’em with the rudder if it comes to that.  A good production manager is crafty, thrifty, and when needed, a brutal task master.  He knows his crew and can and will push them to the edge when needed. 

A really smart plant manager will find and keep the best maintenance people he/she can find.  In fact, a savvy plant manager will always vote to throw a chemist overboard rather than let a maintenance person go.  One of the least acknowledged groups at a chemical plant is the maintenance crew.  To keep the plant up and running you need the skill sets of plumbers, welders, pipefitters, machinists, electricians, iron workers, carpenters, tinners, and a bunch of general handymen and gofers.  Usually you hire people with multiple skill sets.

The best plant managers are steely-eyed SOB’s who speak softly and command respect and maybe a little fear. A plant manager must be able to work effectively with arrogant executives, stubborn accountants, egghead scientists, angry admin staff, defensive production people, and sly construction contractors.  The people skills are as important as the technical skills.

If I were going to hire people for key management positions in a plant, I would hire people from the nuclear Navy. As a group, they have already been screened for many attributes useful to a chemical plant. They tend to be high achievers, have good quantitative skills, have been highly trained for work in hazardous environments, and they understand the importance of following protocol.

GD vs ICP Mass Spec

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I wonder if there are any mass spec jockeys out there who can comment on the relative accuracy of Glow Discharge Mass Spec (GDMS) with ICP Mass Spec (ICPMS)  at the ppm level?  In other words, if one has data taken from each and compares them side by side, which should one side with? I have results from both analyses on a metal oxide and I’m puzzled as to which I should stand behind. 

If you have one clock, you know what time it is. If you have two, you’re never sure.

One lab breathlessly proclaims that GDMS is linear over 9 orders of magnitude, but is subject to 20 to 30 % error owing to a lack of a valid standard (??!@#?). The same fellow says that ICPMS is accurate to 5 % at 100 ppm, but the error is considerably higher at 1 ppm. Good gravy.

No doubt, the answer will contain the words “it depends”.  But I wonder what the issues are. 

Plasma Songs From Space

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The radio telescope project has begun. Today I ordered a 20 MHz receiver from Radio Jove.  While we wait for that to arrive we have to source an 8 channel Analog to Digital Converter (ADC) for the data feed into RadioSky-Pipe.  RadioSky has run out of ADC’s, but they recommend Kitsrus out of Hawii.  

We have three surplus computers I bought from work.  Have to pick one and get an operating system (Windows 2000, probably, though Linux is a possibility), a monitor, and a keyboard. 

The biggest issue is the recommended dipole antenna. The kit specifies an East/West 23′ 3″ ft dipole with a 32 ft footprint, is ca 10 ft high, and uses guy wires to stabilize it. Sounds like a trip hazard and a target for vandalism to me.  In that vein, I have been looking at alternative antenna configurations. The folks at Radio Jove are reticent to recommend one, presumably because it is a step away from simplicity for classroom use.  That’s fine. I’m an experimentalist.

One problem with moving away from the dipole antenna design is the unwieldy half-wavelength dimensions. While the dipole eats up real estate, it is structurally simple.  One interesting design is the Moxon antenna.  This antenna uses a bent driven element with a bent reflector element.  Most people use it with the elements in the horizontal plane, thus picking up horizontally polarized signals.  While this makes sense for communications, I’m guessing that the 20 MHz signals from the sun and Jupiter are probably not significantly polarized.  

The Moxon is significantly more directional than a dipole with a front to back ratio 15 to 20 db.  This means that it must be pointed at the radio source for maximum gain.  But its directionality also confers some rejection of terrestrial signals from other directions. From what I can tell, the gain from this design with its reflector element is on the order of 5 db.  This is higher than a dipole but lower than a multi-element Yagi.

We’ll get some baseline experience with the recommended antenna and then begin to look at other configurations.

In my view, one can never know too much about electronics.  This site has some interesting circuit animations.  Cheers!

The Zen of Hazardous Materials

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My first experience with truly hazardous materials was in 1981.  It was a sophomore organic lab and we were making sulfanilamide.  Using chlorosulfonic acid, we attached a ClSO2 group in the para position of acetanilide.  Pedagogically, it was a very rich experience because it validated the idea of O,P-directors, protecting groups, medicinal chemistry, and offered real experience in the handling of hazardous materials.  And, at least as corrosive materials go, they don’t get much more obnoxious than chlorosulfonic acid.

The preparation of sulfanilamide was an excellent lab experience because it brought home some fundamental truths about nature.  Namely, that physical and chemical properties of matter can be “tuned” and tweaked by people to give a desired outcome.  For students, this lab experience connects the inorganic, inanimate world of the periodic table to something closer and more personal.  It gets to the very nanomachinery of life itself.  It is a glimse of how drugs work. It gets right to the pointy end of the stick- Drugs are about selective toxicity. 

Once you have taken the time to gain some understanding of how drugs work at the molecular level, you are forever changed.  One begins to realize that biochemical “mistakes” can happen naturally and are part of the game.  Suddenly, the world is full of rogue “isosteres” and “pharmacophores“.  You can no longer accept blithe generalizations about toxicity and chemical hazards.  There is truth in the First Law of Toxicology- Dose makes the poison.  Your working definition of toxicity takes on new forms, like the notion of endocrine disrupters. 

As time goes on and my view of the natural world becomes increasingly molecular in scope, I find that my working definition of what constitutes “hazardous” has skewed a bit as well. Hazardous does not automatically equal “bad”. The modern material world is now a swirl of substances synthetic and substances natural.  Industry has given us dioxin and nature has given us aflatoxin.  But at worst nature is indifferent; human activity can be negligent or even malevolent. 

A mature view of hazardous materials must simultaneously accomodate physical/chemical reality with certain norms of conduct, with prompt and delayed biological effects of hazardous materials, and with consequences to the biosphere.  In truth, modern society must use hazardous materials to produce goods and services vital for healthy living.  But we chemists must find ways to limit the number of moles of hazardous waste we generate. Especially the persistant substances- metal salts, halogenated hydrocarbons, etc.

Synthetic chemistry relies on reactive materials in order to do bond making and bond breaking.  There really is no getting around the need for reactive materials. But we can find ways to generate reactive materials in situ.  Reactive intermediates are generated in a catalytic cycle and used on the spot.  More pervasive use of catalysis could be a contributor to lower generation of haz waste or a greener chemistry.  This is just a corollary to Trost’s Atom Efficiency concept.

Hazardous materials have a utility that is similar to a knife.  A knife is a tool that does a very useful thing- it cuts. Every single time you pick it up you have to be wary of the edge and the point.  It is a persistant hazard.  But we continue to use it because of it’s utility.  In a way, chemicals are the just like that.

Professors and Their Patents

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I had the occasion to have a conversation with a very prominent chemistry professor this week.  He has many hundreds of publications and many, many patents.  The fellow’s name would be familiar to many.  As such characters tend to be, he was overflowing with ideas and enthusiasm. His energy was evident from the precocious stream of insights and commentary that flowed from his gurgling fountain of knowledge.  

But something he said in passing caught my attention and for a moment halted my petit mal seizures resulting from overexposure to his relentless rhapsody of intellection and hypercogency.  He chimed that not so long ago his University had been passively collecting a stack of patents generated by its faculty. They had been in no particular hurry to do anything with the IP and had only recently started to take an interest in it. He made a furtive attempt to strike a spark of interest in his patents and when met with silence, quickly retracted it back into its sheath.

In my travels I have encountered professors who have made faint reference to their patents, say, during a poster session, in the manner of weary gentry casually mentioning an obscure parcel of prairie in Oklahoma.  Interesting, but yesterday’s news.  Sort of a publication, but … not really. Not all profs have such a casual view of patents, however. 

<<<<<< A snarky sentence was removed>>>>>>> …  Apparently he was patenting most everything that spewed from his labs.  Every permutation- methyl, ethyl, butyl, … futyl- was carefully covered by complex Markush claims so as to anticipate even the most clever work-around.  It makes one wonder how such research groups are properly managed. Do you have an IP group and a public domain group? Should people doing the IP work be paid more?

What raises my hackles about university patents is this: As a result of the Bayh-Dole act, universities can be assigned patents to inventions that were funded by federal tax money.  Superficially, it sounds like a decent idea.  It sounds like it might facilitate technology transfer. What’s wrong with that?

Well, let’s see.  A patent confers 20 year monopoly rights to the assignee (rarely the inventor) for a process and/or composition of matter.  One obtains a patent in order to enjoy protection from infringement, or unauthorized use. In the case of a university, just who do they need protection from?? The public who paid for the research leading to the invention? 

What kind of public policy is this?  Public monies are disbursed competitively in the form of research grants which funds the research.  The public pays for the bricks and mortar to keep the wind and rain off that new 600 MHz NMR in the new wing and for the journal subscriptions in the library.  The public has to pay for the patent prosecution and the trips to ACS meetings to give a talk about the work (though rarely is there a mention that a patent is pending).

The public has to pay Chemical Abstracts Service for access to bibliographic information and copy fees or journal subscriptions or download fees to access the information.  For a business to use the invention, a license agreement has to be negotiated and in all likelihood, will have to pay a fee upfront, well in advance of the first dollar of sales, and submit to annual audits.  With any given patent, the University Tech Transfer Office may have already issued an exclusive license to someone else. In that case, tough luck.

Granted, some of the more IP savvy schools reap decent royalties from some fraction of their patents, i.e., MIT & CalTech.  But I would say that they are in the minority. Most patents just consume money, not generate it.  These unexploited patents merely serve as a barrier to the public who are trying to get product to market.  It is quite easy for a chemist to reinvent a compound or process that has been claimed by someone else already.  It is bad enough when it is your competition. It really stings when you are barred from practicing art that you unwittingly helped to pay for.

Let me sponge up the bile and make room for others to comment. What do you think about this issue?  I’m probably just full of hot air.

Note: This is a revised post, with minor content editing. 

Chemists and Chemical Engineers

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What an awkard pair, these chemists and chemical engineers.  To strangers from a distance they might appear almost interchangeable.  Someone from another field might assume that the differences could be as inconsequential as minor variations in accent or hair style are between neighbors.  A simple matter of preference for the practical or the arcane. But that someone would be wrong.

Chemists and Chem E’s are really quite different by training and by disposition.  We chemists think of our field as resting upon the three pillars- Theory, Synthesis, and Analysis.  Chem E’s will agree, but they’ll point out that there is a 4th pillar- Economics. 

Here is an act of convulsive reductionism:  Atomic and Molecular Chemistry (as opposed to Nuclear Chemistry), the science we normally think of when we use the word “Chemistry”, really concerns itself with the behavior of electrons near positive point charges. When we cause a chemical change we are perturbing the disposition of electrons somewhere. In doing so, ensembles of nuclei and their electrons connect, disconnect, or otherwise alter the disposition of the electrons.  Chemists make and break bonds, transfer electrons, or promote electrons to particular energy states.  This work is limited to the outermost layers of the onion. We rarely ever have to consider the inner layers of electrons and we never monkey with the nucleus.

Chemistry is very much an electronic activity. It is the realm of electronic quantum mechanical formalism and machinations at the Angstrom scale. Virtually every chemical change we do involves the twiddling of electrons somewhere.

Chem E’s, on the other hand, practice applied classical physical chemistry.  Unlike organikkers such as myself, they took a serious fancy to P-chem. Their quantum unit is the dollar. These folks can actually put thermo to use for fun and profit. They understand the sacred and profane applications of the gas laws. Chem E’s can specify what sort of pump you need to move whatever variety of hellbroth you care to convey and they can probably estimate the Reynolds number of the rainwater running off your nose.  A Chem E can tell you what kind of materials of construction and seals you need to reflux thionyl chloride in your reactor and what kind of chiller capacity you need to condense it. 

And as engineers, they can plan a construction schedule, work up a cost estimate, and supervise the construction of whatever kind of process equipment you care to specify from the dirt up.  A chemist could probably do it as well, but it would look like a chemist did it.  I have personal experience here.

You probably wouldn’t ask a Chem E to synthesize vitamin B-12.  But they wouldn’t ask a chemist to design a continuous fractional distillation column either.

Assorted Links

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This Wine Enthusiast link offers a small distillation unit for distilling the volatiles from wine or beer.  Your next shot of brandy is only minutes away.  Of course, the distillate may be flammable, so I’d be careful with that burner.

Check out the Museum of Lost Wonder. Pretty wild.  Then, there is the day that they foamed the fountain of the Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg, Russia.  If you’re keen on learning the top 10 prejudices Germans have about the USA, check out this blog.  Hard to argue with it’s accuracy.  Had a nagging urge to hop in a submarine and go for a dive?  Check out U-Boat Worx. The specs say that it is limited to 50 meters depth.  I wonder what the crush depth is- 150 meters? I’d imagine that the seals would fail first and the thing would flood before it imploded.

Chemical Blogometrics

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I see that according to Chemical Blogspace, my Gunning-Fog index has gone up a notch- from Al Gore to Thomas Pynchon.  Oh, good gawd.  Now I have to worry about that as well…?

Forty thousand years ago all you had to worry about was a sabre tooth tiger dropping out of a tree on you, or those nasty Neanderthals up the river raiding your camp, killing your women and raping the men. Today we have secretive organizations applying these odd metrics from the dark recesses of the blogosphere. Who are these people? And, what do they want? 

Actually, what they are doing is quite interesting. It provides good feedback for bloggers. Once we wipe away the tears we can improve our “product”.

All this talk coming from a guy who writes under a pseudonym \;-)

Specification Creep

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Back in grad school, when I was a younger and more innocent chemist, I never gave the matter of purity specifications much thought. Well, let me qualify that.  If my Aldrich reagent was 98 % or greater, I was usually happy.  Yeah, there is the matter of water and a few other things, but for the most part specs didn’t pop into my radar very much.  The other cats and dogs in the material usually washed out somewhere along the reaction sequence.

The issue of specifications in the fabulous world of industry, however, is a really big deal. Indeed, for a company that does custom synthesis or is otherwise agreeable to starting up production of a new product, the matter of negotiating specifications is strangely complex.  Customers have expectations of how pure their product should be and the manufacturer, that is, those who are grounded in the bitter reality of chemical processing, may be far less certain as to what constitutes a reasonable specification. This is nothing new or secret.  All other manufacturing industries have the same issue. 

I previously said that the matter was strangely complex.  Before the customer and the manufacturer can agree on a deal, they have to resolve the matter of what is needed vs what is wanted. 

Here is a case study: the customer initially specifies 99.0 % purity, white crystalline solid, and no greater than 0.2 % residual solvent. And they want it for $100/kg for a metric ton.  Fine, you say, it’s a hundred kilobucks worth of business. We’ll go in the lab and front run a process. This way we’ll be able to give the customer a qualification sample, and just as importantly, get an idea of the process economics.

The chemist does a representative front run and reports the following.  The process produces 68 % isolated yield of off-white powdered solid that has clumps, 1H-NMR shows that it is 98.3 % pure and it has 0.5 % residual solvent.  The product is a first crop and the solvent is a high boiler like toluene. Analysis of the mother liquor shows that there is an additional 21 % of product remaining with the balance of the mass as unidentified colored components. 

This is a node in the decision process for the manufacturer.  From this result, we have to make a business case to go forward or decline and offer a “No Quote”.

The customer has expressed a preference for a pricing set point of $100 per kg for a metric ton.  It is hard to know if this price and volume are just posturing or if they are firm numbers.  More often than not, the customer will decline to disclose an upper price limit.  Remember, the buyer’s job is to get the lowest price and the sellers job is to get the highest profit.  It is common for a buyer to ask for a quote on a volume higher than they intend to order just to see where the price/volume curve flattens.

The first thing to notice is that the first crop fails to meet the specifications all around. Low purity, high residual solvent, off color, and clumps of powdery material instead of free flowing crystalline product. A estimate of the cost of manufacture suggests that the raw material cost is about $38 per kg and the labor and overhead cost is $52 per kg. The first pass doesn’t look good- estimated costs are ~$90/kg for off spec stuff.  Irrespective of the product’s compliance with the spec, if your sample is truly representative it might be worth sending a sample to the customer anyway.  You never know. The customer may recoil in horror or find that it works in their process despite being “off-spec”. 

It is at this point that the sales or business development manager has to make a decision- Are there any insurmountable problems with the front run?  If not, we have to decide if we want to risk R&D time to do process development to tweak the process to give product that meets the spec.  Remember, time = money.

The good news is that the purity is only slightly low, the residual solvent can be pumped down in a vacuum oven, and the clumps can be sieved out. But remember, too much “polishing” will tend to increase labor costs per kg of product. 

The color appearance is another matter.  It might be resolvable within the customers price constraint, or not. The transition from off-white to just white can be a difficult change. Whiteness is surprisingly subjective and dependent on particle size. And, particle sizing can involve a lot of art.  If the product were a $100,000 per kg pharmaceutical, there would be much more motivation to get the color right. Remember, it is only a $100,000 sale. One could easily burn up all of the profit in an prolonged period of process development and pilot plant time before you even sell the first kilogram. 

Product appearance would be a good candidate for negotiations with the customer. Try to get them to give up white for “white to off-white”.

The price is another problem.  It is too low.  It is desirable to have 20 % profit after interest and taxes, just like the pharmaceutical folks report.  A good rule of thumb is that the total manufacturing cost should be approximately 50 % of the price or less.  This is highly variable and subject to the company’s accounting practices.  So, just for arguments sake, let’s say that we need to get the price to equal twice the cost. 

To come in with a reasonable profit, we have to get the manufacturing cost down to $50 per kg.  The raw material costs were calculated at $38 per kg. Raw material costs are the least flexible, so that leaves little room for labor costs at a targeted $50/kg mfg cost.  The good news is that the labor costs are higher than the raw material costs, so at least there is some hope for bringing the total cost in line.  Labor costs can be brought down with processing experience and innovation. The learning curve is real and good plant manager can bring labor costs down over the product lifetime. 

In this circumstance, I would vote that we go forward with the product if we can initially keep the mfg costs at 65 % of the price or lower.  I would also vote that we send a representative sample to the customer for evaluation. In the mean time, we can do a bit of R&D to find a better process. 

Finally, one of the business risks for a manufacturer is the issue of “specification creep”.  Initially, a manufacturer will agree to produce a new product with a particular set of specifications. However, if the customer is simultaneously developing their use of this chemical in their new product while you are developing this chemical process, a gap in specifications might occur.  In other words, the customer might begin to tweak the product specs while you are in the middle of process development. 

The customer will call one day and try to add a specification. They will find that a previously obscure side product will present a big problem for them and they’ll indicate that the project will require higher purity.  Well, this might be a big problem, or not.  If it requires a tighter fractional distillation, assuming you can do it, this will probably add labor costs. If it requires further decolorization or reduction of residual solvent, R&D will be required to validate the changes to your process.  It is actually a big deal.

So, why not just say “NO”?  Well, in all likelihood, you have not been paid yet.  Few customers will pay for development in advance. Those costs have to come out of future sales.  It is a lot like boiling the frog. You just ramp up the temperature imperceptably and the frog never notices that he is being cooked.  The same effect can happen with specification creep.  By being willing to work with the customer you’ll find that at some point it becomes too costly to go forward at the arranged price. 

At this point you have arrived at the hardest part of doing business- the part where you have to say NO to a customer.  Some people can’t do it. Honestly. But if you want to survive, you have to set boundaries. The customer will understand.  This is where good communication skills come in. It is always desirable to give bad new earlier than later.

Teaching College Chemistry in the Internet Age

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It has been 10 years since I was an Asst. Prof. of Chemistry.  My jump to the dark side (business) has largely disconnected me from the latest trends in chemical education. Much has changed in regard to information technology.  Students now show up in class with laptop computers and cell phones. They didn’t 10 years ago.

I do have a question in regard to the Internet and how it may add or subtract from use of the literature.   Are students referencing web sites in lab writeups or papers? How does that work? Just what kind of legitimacy does the internet enjoy today as a “reference”?  How has the internet affected how we archive information? 

And just how do you handle the matter of students and their cell phones?  Calls and text messaging could be pretty disruptive to the classroom.