On Running a Plant

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Here is a collection of thoughts on running a chemical plant, listed in no particular order.

  • Always have some extra production capacity. Don’t be tempted to book every hour of plant time with processes.
  • It’s easier to get purchase orders than you think. Corollary: It is easier to overbook a plant than you think.
  • Hire the smartest, hardest working people you can afford. 
  • Never do R&D in the plant. Consider using laboratories for that.
  • You will eventually have an incident or an accident. Make sure the HAZWOPER people drill every now and then.
  • Beware the rag layer. It will confuse the operators.
  • Hot filter cakes can ruin your whole day.
  • Somebody sit and think about how failures might be expected to propagate during an incident.
  • Don’t be an asshole.
  • Watch out for reactions with initiation lag times. They’ll getcha.  Stored energy is scary.
  • Try to get the supplier to send dry, clean solvents. Purifying solvents is always a money losing operation.  The same is true for all starting materials.
  • To the greatest extent possible, try to move solutions around rather than solids. Solids handling is always more difficult.
  • Think about where that butyllithium solution is going to go if there is a spill.
  • Try to decide early on how you would like the next disaster to unfold. This is true for all hazardous operations- plant operations, highway driving, or marriage.

I’m sure there are many more good suggestions from Bloggerspace.

C6D6

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Crap. I nearly had a heart attack the other day. Absentmindedly, I burned an NMR in CDCl3 instead of C6D6. The shifts were all cattywompus. The atropisomerism I was expecting from the amide was nearly non-existent in deuterochloroform and my aromatic peaks were all flibbertygibbet. Cripes! This was no good at all!

So, I went to a nearby diner and thought about it over a plate of hashbrowns with onions, jalapenos, and cheese. While gnawing on the breath-busting composition, the problem of solvents dawned on me like an ice cream headache. Doh!!

Romney Fires Ejection Seat

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Just when I was getting used to the possibility of an epic Mormon Migration to the District of Columbia, Mitt Romney bails from the flaming cockpit of his campaign. At least for the next cycle, we will not see young missionaries in white shirt and tie parking their bicycles at the State Department or the CIA. That Ambassador-at-Large slot for Marie Osmond will have to wait and purveyors of caffeine and intoxicating liquors can rest at ease tonight. No temple garments hanging on the line back behind the White House either.

Utah is occupied by wholesome folk with a really odd theory of the universe. Eventually their time to decorate the Lincoln bedroom will come, but not in 2009.

Sentition and the Phenomenous Object

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In his Seed article Questioning Consciousness, author Nicholas Humphrey asserts that if we are to understand the phenomenon of consciousness, we must begin to formulate better questions.  Humphrey has written on the problem of consciousness and has been be promoting some new vocabulary and arguments to address this challenge.

The basic question that people have struggled with is this: How does the brain elicit consciousness? Obviously, this is a very hard question to answer. It requires the brain to reason about its own function and within the very constraints of those brain functions.

Naturally people want to find a mechanistic picture and the notion that the brain is a processing system that accepts inputs and delivers outputs is normal. But outputs to what? Well, your consciousness- your eternal, first person, live on the scene, internal-telecast of stimulus and response.

Humphrey defines “Sentition” as real world brain activity. Presumably this includes the sum of electrical and chemical activity that operates within the brain’s distinctive architecture.  Humphrey goes on to define more language to describe our perception of sentition-

The real-world brain activity is the activity that I call “sentition.” In response to sensory stimulation, we react with an evolutionarily ancient form of internalized bodily expression (something like an inner grimace or smile). We then experience this as sensation when we form an inner picture—by monitoring the command signals—of just what we are doing.

Sentition has been subtly shaped in the course of evolution so as to instill our picture of it with those added dimensions of phenomenality. Sentition has, in short, become what I call a “phenomenous object”—defined as “something that when monitored by introspection seems to have phenomenal properties.”

While it may seem trivial, the definition of appropriate terms to describe key attributes of consciousness is critical to how we think about it. New terms may be better as they are not burdened with common usage that distract from the problem.

This article in Seed is not a seminal work. It is a short essay on consciousness and an introduction to some interesting ideas for hackers like myself who realize that the field is very significant. I believe that a comprehensive theory of consciousness is as important as the ToE the physicists are looking for- Theory of Everything.

That Pesky Brazil Nut Effect

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The Brazil Nut Effect is a type of equilibration process that granular systems with a distribution of particle sizes will undergo. It occurs with agitation and proceeds in such a manner as to result in a final state with the center of mass as low as possible. The equilibrated state results in the larger particles migrating towards the top and the smaller particles filling the void spaces down low. According to the above Wikipedia site, certain container shapes can suppress or enhance this effect.

In the merchant chemical business, suppliers strive to provide customers with the maximum quality that is feasible.  Some applications require high chemical purity and others require less purity. The trick is to pay for the purity that you need.  Excess purity is an unnecessary expense.

In many applications a chemical substance must be both chemically pure and of a certain specific physical form.  For applications where the solid must be blended to form a suspension, a slurry, or it must dissolve rapidly, a small particle size is often desirable. Particle size control and analysis is an art that many synthetic chemists can go through their entire careers and never encounter.

In the process of filtration, solids often compact along surfaces to afford flakes and angular chunks that may retain their shape until they reach the package. Lumps can arise from incomplete washing and drying and may be indicative of chemical inhomogeneity in the bulk material. 

Chemical products that are used in compounding for very exacting applications- catalysts, coatings, polymer compounding- may have specifications that require the absence of lumps in the bulk solid. Free flowing homogeneous powders can be prepared by milling or sieving or even spray drying. Compounds that are air, moisture, or light sensitive may not respond well to excessive handling. Before you accept business involving powdered products with bulk solid specs, you need to demonstrate that it is art that you can actually perform.

This is where a smart buyer is worth their weight in gold. Instead of having their own company take the burden of particle sizing, they make the vendor do it. And if the vendor fails, find another.

Where the Brazil Nut Effect seems to enter my life is when the product finally arrives at the customers facility.  If your nice powder had even a single hidden clump in it, you can bet that on arrival it has migrated to the surface to greet the frowning customer. I have received digital photographs of this from customers who wished to drive home the point. So, you just buck up and apologize as sweetly as you can manage and give them your FedEx number so they can send it back.

Send your Gluteal Scan to the FBI

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It is hard to believe with all of the “good” news lately that the US gvernment is on our side. The Bush II Y2009 budget proposal comes in at a stunning $3.1 Trillion against an estimated $2.5 Trillion in receipts.

The FBI wants to collect biometric data on US citizens. It wasn’t clear to me as to whether they want to collect this data as law abiding citizens go about their business at airports with iris scans and electronic fingerprints, or if they will limit the effort to people taken into custody.  In any case, the notion of our government collecting ever more data on its citizens should bring chills to everyone.  It is all about control. Once taken, never returned.

I, for one, would be only too happy to fax a photocopy of my biometric gluteal cleft to the FBI to post wherever it suits them. It shines like a mackerel in the moonlight. In fact, there is a protest movement I could get on board with- The Million Man Moon on Washington.

The Customs and Border Patrol agency has proposed the new “10 + 2” rule which should be a real delite to deal with. We’re already scrambling to figure out what the hell this means for the purchasing people.  Lots of detailed info will have to be timed properly to keep things moving through customs.  It’s going to be a big mess and the only benefit will be that the government will collect more duties.

Chinese Cyberwar and US Interests

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An intelligence report posted by International Relations and Security Network (ISN) at the Center for Security Studies at ETH in Zurich reveals what appears to be a widening and systematic program of cyber attacks on US government data infrastructure by elements within the military organ of China.

Rachel Kesselman at ISN Security Watch writes-

According to a 2006 US Defense Department report, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) began developing information warfare reserves and militia units in 2005, often incorporating them into broader exercises and training. The establishment of this elite Chinese unit is evident by a likely increase in sophisticated attacks on high-risk targets.

Reports in Chinese newspapers also suggest that the Chinese are actively attempting to establish a cybermilitia. A Time Magazine article entitled “Enemies at The Firewall” purports that the military has put forth a concerted effort to carry out nationwide recruiting campaigns in hopes of discovering the country’s most brilliant hackers. 

Like so many Americans, I live in a bubble. The extent and brazenness of the activity reported by ISN and other sources only serves to stimulate the paranoid cortex of my brain.

What seems likely is that most nations are engaged in systematic probing of the data resources of the upper tier states. Chinese enthusiasm for this activity may or may not be exceptional among the nuclear states. Certainly, computer spycraft is nothing new and that China practices it shouldn’t be a surprise.

Henry Kissinger once remarked that nation states do not have friends. They only act in parallel with states having similar interests. In this vein, we should not be lulled into thinking that China, or any other state for that matter, is our friend. China is certainly not our friend. The US is a fountain of wealth that they aim to tap through government backed market activity.

Economic idealogues in the US prattle on tirelessly about the virtues of the free market and the merits of regulatory deconstruction. But on the global scale, markets are unavoidably tied to regulatory constructs as a result of notions about security and dominance.

Just try to get a shipment of anything to China or to South Africa or into the USA. There is no free market. Every single aspect of a transaction is highly regulated or controlled by some apparatus that is highly controlled. Tariff codes, tariffs, shipping reglations, wire transfers, and customs clearance- the reality of a free market barely extends past the canopy of a fruitstand in a farmers market.

I believe that the US should cast off this free market puritanism and act in a manner so as to protect its economic interests. Yes, we’d like to keep as free a market as possible. But American culture, not government, has to be the locus of change. American culture should de-emphasize its fascination with pure wealth and look askance at the sterile detachment many influential businessmen have with regard to their profit motive. We want to be profitable. But we do not want to hand over the keys to our technological toolshed for a quick buck. If we cannot afford to manufacture here, there should be an expectation that we try to innovate around the economic barriers rather than just resort to abandonment.

We should be wary about using the language of friendship with China. This nation has its own sense of where it is headed and has become quite refractory to admonitions and paternalistic brow beatings by the US and others.  It has its own momentum and will do what is in its best interest. Americans should do what is in their best interest as well. That is, avoid trading the farm to foreign interests who have much more discipline with their attention span. 

America’s Achilles heel seems to be the inability to be patient and plan for results over the long term. We live in a NOW culture. Advances in computer technology has only engorged our expectation that we can and should have everything now. The mortgage and credit crises are only the latest examples of this.

American culture has gotten fat and lazy. Our rotund wastelines are only the exterior. Within our culture is a kind of bacchanalian sloth that has drifted like a fog into our collective yard party. Everyone is too busy eating and drinking to notice that the greed-heads have set the house on fire.

Beatles in Space

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NASA has announced that it will broadcast a 4 minute digital data stream toward the direction of Polaris, the North Star. The broadcast will originate from the Deep Space Network and will feature the Beatles song “Across the Universe“. 

Again, NASA has neglected to solicit my advice. I would have suggested “I am the Walrus“.

Imagine an you’re alien sitting in a remote antenna site with headphones over your ear stalks when all of a sudden Day Tripper appears over the background noise. [I like the dancers- it’s just so 60’s]

Of course, when the signal is received on planet Pffthklct-3 many centuries from now, someone some sentient mollusk will have to clean up the signal and reduce it to audio to get the full effect of music. Doppler effect arising from relative motions between earth and “them” would affect the tempo, perhaps in comical ways.  It would be tragic if hopeful listeners in the depths of space mistook it as a kind of Encyclopedia Galactica and henceforth tried to decrypt it while looking for some kind of blueprint of advanced technology a la Carl Sagan’s fictional piece “Contact”.

Though an audience is a long shot, it seems a fitting tribute to the Beatles and to NASA.