Document ND3xrJq5n7axOqLX7XJY2ny

3MA00005401 1365.0001 f E x h ib it 1365 State of Minnesota v. 3M Co., Court File No. 27-CV-10-28862 1365.0002 3MA00005402 A Chemical History of 3M 1933 - 1990 Neil MacKay Published by The 3M Chemical, Film & Allied Products Group The Bureau of Engraving, Inc. Minneapolis, Minnesota 1991 Copyright 1991 3M .V $ ii 131 3MA00005408 CHAPTER Joe Simons' Stuff In the late 1930s and early 1940s a body o f American scientists (knowingly or unknowingly, depending on their need to know) were working to create the first atom bomb. To accomplish that, they had to discover a method o f separating uranium-235, which is the fis sionable variety, from ordinary uranium-238. One suggestion was to handle the uranium as uranium hexafluoride vapor, a highly cor rosive, poisonous material. Easier said than done. As a matter o f fact, it was impossible. No one knew how to do it, but all agreed that if it could be done, the job not only would be Herculean, but extremely hazardous. And, if and when uranium hex afluoride vapor was produced, additional questions would have to be answered. How could fluorine be stored? What super materials would have to be invented to manufacture storage tanks, pipes, pumps, valves, gaskets and even lubricants that would not burst into flames, explode or corrode on contact with fluorine? How could they ship the vapor from one factory to another? How could they protect the people who would handle the vapor? Those were just a few o f many questions that had to be answered by scientists in the Manhattan Project, the code name for the A-bomb development program. Columbia University in New York City, where an atom smasher had been installed in the basement o f the Physics building, was head quarters, but thousands o f scientists also were participating in univer sities and government installations across the United States. Scien tists at the University o f California, the University o f Chicago, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Purdue and Cornell also were conducting theoret- 2 ical studies. Company researchers who helped were employed by Hooker and the Harshaw chemical companies. Government super vised production and testing facilities were at Hanford, Washington, Los Alamos and Alamagordo, New Mexico, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee. After the war, some of those researchers landed at 3M, including several who joined the Fluorochemical Project. Lyle Hals, a retired 3Mer, was enjoined from telling anyone, even close relatives, about his employment or employer during two years at Columbia, where he was one o f several thousand men and women working for the Manhattan Project. Buildings on and near the Columbia campus com prised the hub o f activity until the project was moved to the football stadium at the University o f Chicago. Although the Manhattan Project scientists were gingerly treading new ground, they did have some fluorine history to fall back on. The study o f organic fluorine compounds dates almost from the begin ning o f organic chemistry. Fluorochemicals are componds o f fluorine and any o f a number of other elements. Fluorine is one o f nature's commonest elements, more abundant than copper, a hundred times more abundant than iodine. One of the places it is found is in fluorspar, a rock used before the founding o f the Holy Roman Empire as a flux for smelting iron and the primary source o f commercial fluorine today. Fluorine, which can be liberated from the rock by using sulfuric acid, appears as a hydrogen fluoride gas. That is the form in which it usually is handled commercially before it is separated from its hydrogen and combined with something else. As the Manhattan Project scientists well knew, handling fluorine is a major problem. In its pure, uncontrolled state--fortunately never found in nature--it is one o f the most active, most dangerous elements known to man. The greenish-yellow gas will burn steel, water and even asbestos, which earned it a nickname--the wildest hellcat. Strangely, its wildness contributes to fluorine's unique stability when it is combined with certain compounds. It was first isolated more than a hundred years ago, in 1886, by French chemist Henri Moissan, who reacted gaseous fluorine with carbon tetrachloride to make a reactive fluorocarbon. He was near ly killed for his effort, but lived to win a Nobel Prize. There the matter stood until after the turn o f the century when 1365.0009 methods o f preparing organic fluorine compounds were advanced by the contributions of a Belgian chemist named Swarts. His work on the replacement o f chlorine with fluorine laid the foundation for the commercialization o f the compounds o f carbon, chlorine and fluorine. German scientist Otto Ruff made the first liquid fluorocarbons at room temperature. His published findings preceded more extensive efforts in this country by a number o f academic groups. The mid-1930s were exciting years for the development o f fluorine chemistry as academic research and industrial development grew rapidly. A scientist named A1 Henne, who had been Swarts' student in Belgium ; developed the manufacturing process for a chlorofluorocarbon while working for General Motors in Detroit. GM arranged with DuPont to manufacture its product which was nam ed Freon 12TM. Later DuPont developed a similar product named Freon 22TM. DuPont's product is widely used as a coolant for refrigerators, a blowing agent for foamed plastics, a degreasing sol vent and more. DuPont chemists also polymerized tetrafluoroethylene trade nam ed TeflonTM. Contemporaries at 1. G. Farben in Germany did the same with chlorotrifluoroethylene. Other scientists also were pursuing fluorine chemistry in industry and campus laboratories. Phillips Petroleum Corporation used it to develop a system that produced high octane gasoline. Farben patented several successful applications. Al Penn Slate College (now University), Professor Joseph A. Simons, working independently, produced liquid fluorocarbons, in cluding high boiling point compounds. Pre-war researchers knew that the more fluorine there was in an organic compound, the lower its boiling point. Because or that, highly fluorinated compounds tended to be gases at room temperature. Fur thermore, all research on organo-fluorine compounds was by direct fluorination or exchange reaction. Simons used direct fluorination o f carbon in his laboratory, but believed that he could make more complex fluorocarbons by run ning fluorination under milder conditions. If nothing else, that would avoid the possibility o f explosions and fires associated with direct fluorination. With that in mind, the professor directed his students to study 28 _________________________________________________ panies to form the National Synthetic Rubber Corporation to operate a government-owned synthetic rubber factory in Louisville, Kentucky. That venture was not very profitable becausethe cost of raw materials and the selling price o f the product were controlled by the federal government. Operating the plant, however, allowed 3M " to acquire technical information regarding the manufacture and use o f synthetic rubber which may be valuable should synthetic rubber play an im portant part in the post-war econom y." Inland Rubber Corporation was acquired by 3M in 1941. Later, that subsidiary's name was chang ed to Midland Rubber Corporation. Subsequently some o f the firm's assets were disposed o f by 3M. 3M and many other U .S companies suffered from raw material and manpower shortages during the war, but that situation was revers ed in the post-war boom years. By 1948, 3M could report that man power in Central Research and division laboratories had increased about twenty percent that year. 3M also was operating sixteen fac tories (compared with four in 1942) in fifteen cities and warehouses or sales offices in eighteen cities. The 1948 report also stated that 3M was in the middle o f a twenty million dollar expansion program. In 1949 two new corporate positions were created. Mr. McKnight became Chairman o f the Board, Archibald G. Bush Chairman of the Executive Committee, and Richard P. Carlton replaced Mr. McKnight as 3M President. In the previous year, Carlton had been appointed Executive Vice-President o f Production, Engineering and Research. Sales in 1949 totaled $114,925,274 compared with $63,548,337 in I945. Profits were $15,398,176 or nearly five times larger than the profits reported in 1945. During that same period, the number o f employees grew from 6,795 to 8,759. That was the atmosphere at 3M when the fluorochemical technology was placed in Central Research in 1945. When Diesslin returned from training at Penn State, he was ap pointed manager o f the Pilot Plant. Don Wardrop, a Chemical Engineer who had joined 3M and the Project in 1946, became Diesslin 's assistant. Wardrop and Roy McKenzie, the Project Engineer, designed and supervised the construction o f the two-thousand-ampere cell which was placed in operation in the Pilot Plant in the spring o f 1947. Building a cell that size was a decided gamble because Simons had made only grams o f a number o f different substances and produced only pounds o f the CF gases (CF4, C2Fn. C.iFr) that the pilot plant was designed to produce in larger quantities. Simons' technology also could only produce inert fluorocarbons, so 3M's goal was to develop reactive materials while also coming up with new, profitable uses for inert fluids. No one knew how to produce reactive fluorochemicals, but they were certain that it could be done. Evenduring the early research at Penn State, Simons believ ed that by their very nature reactive fluorochemicals would be superior repellents o f water, oil and other staining liquids. " We knew ," Jim Hendricks said, " that if you replaced the hydrogen with fluorine atoms in organic materials, you were go ing to get very unusual properties. And, surely something o f value would come out o f those unusual properties." Furthermore, 3M manage ment often " preached that we want something unique and novel." The work to develop an inert refrigerant fluid was obvious because 3M's laboratory cells were producing materials which were biological ly inert and stable. That program failed, however, because 3M 's sell ing price was too high. Another reason was that 3M 's product did not perform as well as those o f competitors. 3M also pursued the use o f inert fluids as dielectric coolants for transformers and electronic equipment. A small quantity o f the li quid could be pumped from a sump in a transformer housing and sprayed over the windings to cool by evaporation. Westinghouse Elec tric Corporation built two large tranformers which used 3M 's inert liquid successfully, but 3M still could not produce and sell its fluids at an attractive price. Inert fluids were ahead o f their time. Nearly two decades later, in (he late I960s, they became popular as coolants for electronic devices and equipment. A major obstacle to the reactive fluorocarbon research was the laboratory staff's inability to analyze the solids and gases produced in the cells. The problem was caused in part by the newness o f the' technology. Another factor was that testing equipment o f the type found in laboratories in later years simply did not exist in the 1940s and 1950s. Some help was obtained from Professor Alfred O. Nier* at fae UofM who ran 3M tests on the university's new mass spec- Nict- supported the Manhattan Projcci through uranium studies and tests in his laboratory hcforc the war and Inter worked fulllimc at Oak Ridge. Tennessee. developing spectrometer separations ol* uranium isotopes, 3MA00005422 1365.0022 scientist ever to win that honor. Sherman became a Senior Research Specialist, 3M s second highest technical rank, in 1967 while in the Chemical Division Laboratory, where she worked from 1957 until 1973. She was Commercial Pro ducts Development Manager in Chemical Resources Division until 1982, when she assumed her present administrative posi tion as Manager o f Technical Development for the corporation. Dr. Thomas J. Brice and Paul Trott shared the important discovery that show ed by changing the class o f feed materials in the Simons cell a new class of fluorochemicals could be produced. Those fluorocarbon sulfonic acids became the Sam Smith essential building blocks for the develop ment o f Scotchgard protector products. In 1969, Brice was inducted into the Carlton Society for his joint in vention of fluorocarbon sulfonic acids and for training and guiding young chemists in research. A native o f Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Brice graduated summa cum laude from Coe College before earning his doctorate from Penn State. He retired in 1985 as a Corporate Scien tist in the Life Sciences Sector after thirty five years with 3M. CHAPTER Faith, Hope and Dissolution On September 22, 1955, only a few months after the Chemical Products Group came into existence, General Manager Oakes had an opportunity to talk about his Group to 3M 's Technical Forum. A written record of that meeting, dated six weeks later on November 7 and signed only with the initials " d e ," indirectly quoted Oakes. The information below was taken from that report. The four divisions were interested predominantly in chemical pro ducts as opposed to fabricated products, Oakes said. They were form ed into a Group to facilitate 3M 's growth into the chemical field with the Divisions the home for3M chemical products. Emphasis would be on growth and profits and continued service to other divisions, he said. The Color and Acid Division at Copley, Ohio, suffered from the problems o f any isolated operation. It was difficult to coordinate the Division's work with that o f the other Divisions, particularly to ob tain the benefits from association with people engaged in fundament al research and new product work. No change from the basic pat tern was being considered, Oakes said, but some re-evaluation o f products might be needed to improve the growth o f the Division. The Irvington Chemical Division, concerned with products derived from cashew nut shell liquid, had developed a wide variety o f new products with potential applications in new fields. It all began in the mid- 1930s after a research chemist, Dr. Mortimer Harvey, who work ed for National Biscuit Company, began investigating various nuts as sources of-proteins and oils. Harvey was intrigued by cashew nuts and made a thorough study o f them. Next page: 3M's Copley, Ohio, plant in 1950. 3MA00005447 1365.0047  124____________________________________________________ longer required for trucks, walling in an HF room with concrete and partitioning office space. Al Diesslin, recently returned from training at Penn State, was ap pointed Pilot Plant Manager. Ed Kauck became Assistant Manager. Wardrop and Bob Anderson were shift bosses. Others assigned to the plant included Lome McCluskey, Jim Smith, Ted Haas, Ralph Swonger, Don Snyder, Carl Klaus and Glenn Church. The latter, hired as a seventeen year old trainee, retired more than forty years later as a Production Planner in the Specialty Chemicals Division. The new cell, at the time, o f course, the largest Simons cell in the world, began operating in the converted garage in 1947. " In two years we expanded the range o f products we could and did produce," Wardrop said years later. " The pilot plant was usually busy and sometimes it was frantic" as the shift crews worked to pro duce sample quantities for internal use. Later, samples also were made for outside companies on request. " That was slow go ing. Sometimes it took a year for a com pany's researchers to evaluate our pro ducts," Wardrop said. Pilot plant usage was so great that after only two years, a movement was begun to replace it with a semi-works plant on the Don Wardop 3M property near Hastings. Whether to build the expensive new plant was one o f the topics at the April 19. 1949, meeting. The semi-works plant--a bridge between a pilot plant and a manufacturing facility--was necessary if the Project were to grow, although at that point not a single fluorochemical product had been sold. 3M property near Hastings was the logical plant site because East Side residents had complained about discharges o f solvents in to the air from the main plant complex on East Seventh Street. Relocating the pilot plant would eliminate any possible future com plaints from other businesses near the Benz building. Construction o f the semi-works plant was begun in 1950 and com pleted in September 1951. Simultaneous with the construction, a new cell and other equipment were fabricated. When completed, the one- story brick building designated as Building 15 enclosed six thousand ! 3MA00005470 1365.0070 square feet and including equipment cost 3M half-a-million dollars. Expertise gained from four years o f operating the Benz building plant helped get the semi-works plant producing quickly. In opera tion, the new facility was light years removed from the old plant. Its ten-thousand-ampere electrolytic cell made it possible to produce fluorochemicals in commercial quantities o f one ton and larger. Pro spective customers could be supplied compounds in large enough quantities to allow evaluations in their own pilot plants or semi-works operations. The large capacity also allowed immediate production to begin when the first order was received from DuPont in 1952. The list of products produced and subsequent sales continued to expand each year.'By 1959, 3 M 's fluorochemical business was pro fitable for the first time in its fourteen-year history. Besides the changes inside the semi-works plant, there were two major ones made outside, too. One answered the question o f how to handle anhydrous hydrofluoric acid (HF), the raw material o f 3M fluorochemicals. At the Benz building, HF was delivered by truck in two hundred pound steel cylinders. That was changed at Chemolite to purchases o f HF in one ton cylinders that resembled horizontal propane tanks seen on farms and in small towns today. Each HF delivery was a filled tank and the truck that made that delivery hauled away the empty tank. The other change was to alter the way in which direct current was supplied to the cell. The motor generator at the Benz plant was too small to power the ten-thousand-ampere cell, so a rectifier was in stalled to change alternating current to direct current. The Benz building plant continued to operate, but in March 1953 the plant's two-thousand-ampere cell was removed and installed in the semi-works plant. With that, the pilot plant workers moved to Chemolite, where Diesslin had been semi-works Plant Manager since 1951. Kauck, who had replaced Diesslin as Manager at the Benz pilot plant, became Production Supervisor and Wardrop was made Engineering Supervisor. The semi-works plant originally was identified as the Central Research Department, Hasting Fluorochemical Pilot Plant. In 1953, it was transferred to NPD and renamed the New Products Division, Hastings Fluorochemical Pilot Plant. Not long after that, it changed hands again. A report in March 1955 identified the semi-works plant as the Fluorochemical Experimental Production Department. Less 128 1954, the first tank car was delivered and by the following February the two new cells were in operation. Growth continued. By August 1957, five new ten-thousand-ampere cells were operating in a large addition constructed on the north side o f Building 15. That meant that nine large cells were in place, more than double the capacity o f two years before. A month later, a ten-thousand-ampere cell o f a different configur ation was installed in an experiment that didn't pan out. Simons cells were (and are today) upright cylinders four to five feet high. The experimental cell was square, an effort to learn whether cell con struction costs could be reduced by adopting a shape that was easier to build. Additional manpower was needed not only because o f the increasing number o f cells, but because the process required attention around the clock every day seven days a week. In the early 1950s, CRL's research facilities consisted o f space on the sixth floor of the Benz building and a small room on the fourth floor o f Building 7, a Hastings Division facility at Chemolite. At that time, a tent was set up as a safety measure east o f Building 7. There CRL employees made polymers from vinyl chloride and buta diene, both volatile chemicals, for the Tape Division. The tent had fiberboard sides, a canvas roof and concrete floor. Inside, stood a twenty-gallon kettle salvaged from the Benz building pilot plant, a small office space and a distilling area. Because the chemicals had to be isolated from possible sparks, the office telephone was housed in a box on a pole fifty feet away. Steam for heat was piped from Building 7. The tent facility was operated around the clock; five days a week for more than a year. Cliff Japs and Al Smith, who worked there, said that the emulsifier sold to DuPont to make Teflon products was developed in the tent. (Even in the middle 1950s, some compounds were mixed outside using fifty-gallon drums and canoe paddles to avoid concentrations o f dangerous fumes.) CRL's new pilot plant designated as Building 16 was started in 1951 and placed in operation a year later. The building which was shared with Hastings Chemical Division, contained a small office, a small laboratory and a maintenance area, plus two bays. Bay one was oc cupied by CRL, bay two by Hastings. During its first ten years, Building 16 was primarily a scale-up 1365.0072 3MA00005472 129 for internal chemicals. It also was involved with the processing steps required to finish the production o f Scotchgard repeller after it was processed in a Simons ceil in the semiworks plant. In 1962, a two-thousandampere cell was built and installed in Building 16. At that point the plant was capable o f working on innovative process ing techniques for protective chemicals. Japs and Smith had graduated as engineers from the UofM in 1949. Japs stayed with CRL eighteen years and retired in the late 1980s as Manufacturing Director o f Commercial Chemicals Division. Smith retired in the 1980s as Technical Director o f Industrial Specialties Division. Some others hired by CRL at Chemolite during that period were Jack Han son, Erwin Korn and Willis Olson. Eventually, after a new Central Research Laboratory was built on 3M's Maplewood campus in 1953-55, Stephens built a new pilot plant there, too. Japs was Pilot Plant Manager and reported to A1 Frye, an Associate Director o f CRL. That pilot plant, enlarged over the years to include another division's pilot plant, was still being operated in 1991. Dr. Wilfried Hirsch arrived at Chemolite in October 1957 to be a Process Engineer with John Thorpe and Robert J. Olsen. In 1990, both Hirsch and Olsen were in the SA&CD laboratory. When Hirsch arrived. Bob Libey was Pilot Plant Manager, reporting to Bill Lundquist. Technical Director o f internal chemicals. Building 16 had been enlarged to three bays by that time. Later, the fourth and fifth bays were added to the east end and an office wing built to the north and. west. That construction also more than doubled the original size o f the plant laboratory. Informality was the word at the pilot plant, Wil Hirsch recalled. " Someone would phone from St. Paul to ask if we could help them. We'd say, `Sure, come on d ow n .' When they arrived w e 'd take a few notes and often as not the visiting customer would stick around to help do `the jo b .' ' The world has changed since those informal days. To work with the Process Development Center in 1991 required completing two 192________________________ ____________________________ That allowed money to be added to the promotion budget. In one super event, a nylon carpet was unrolled on the graveled surface o f a future Los Angeles freeway and a truck dumped a load o f dirt* on it. A bulldozer spread it around. A power roller packed it down. Finally, a crew shoveled and vacuumed away the dirt to reveal the treated surface, a huge Scotchgard protector logo, which was spotless. Un treated areas were a dirty mess. Overhead, a cameraman in a helicopter filmed footage for a one-minute TV commercial. " It w as," Foster attested, " impressive." It was also the " Dir tiest Commercial Ever Aired" according to an article in the Sales Digest published by 3M 's Public Relations Department. Charles M. Kent, Jr., C C D 's Advertising Manager, was quoted as saying that months earlier only eight mills were applying Scotchgard carpet pro tector to fifty-three carpet lines. As o f June 1976, more than seventy mills were applying the 3M product to more than two hundred carpet lines. One story that made the rounds centered on a prospective customer who had given 3M a cold shoulder following a carpet protector presen tation. He saw the " dirtiest commercial" one night on TV and called the 3M Sales Representative the next day. " It's absolutely unbelievable! No product is that good!" he protested. Nevertheless, the commercial not only helped turn him into a customer, but also led him to become an enthusiastic supporter o f 3M 's product. One success led to another, Foster said, with the " bandwagon effect" helping to bring about more and more improvements. Opening a laboratory and technical service center in Tennessee was another positive factor, he said. That facility was opened late in 1978 in Chat tanooga although its territory was across the state line in Dalton, Georgia. Dalton, thirty-nine miles from Chattanooga, is the hub o f our nation's carpet industry. Sixty-five to seventy percent o f the carpeting produced in the United States comes from mills within sixty miles o f Dalton. " This facility is necessitated by increasing demand for Scotchgard brand protector products and 3M's commitment to provide technical services and assistance to customers," Vice-President Krogh said in 1978. " Almost overnight we had a going concern in the center o f the *3M quality control includes the dirt used in tests and promotions. To assure consistency, it is still being produced on demand at Chemolitc and sold to the Division. 1365.0104 3MA00005504 ____ 193 carpel business," Foster said. The building in Chattanooga formerly housed a 3M subsidiary, American Lava Corporation. It was large enough to contain a carpet protector sales office, too. In fact, the new building was three times the size o f the previous laboratory-service space formerly used in the 3M High Point (North Carolina) Branch. Personnel in Chattanooga included Sales Manager Jim McAndrew and four salesmen and Technical Service Manager Jim Johnson and fifteen technical service people. McAndrew had been Sales Manager for the furniture business in High Point and Johnson had been a technical serviceman there. An aggressive marketing program in 1978 included a contest called " Aim for the T op." Teams consisting o f Sales, Marketing and Laboratory personnel representing each industrial product market not only raised sales significantly, but also generated teamwork throughout the Division. Two teams increased their sales performances by more than twenty-five percent. In January, 1979, a European Scotchgard carpet protector promo tion was announced at the Frankfurt (Germany) International Trade Fair for Home Furnishings Textiles. The snowballing carpet business rolled on into other sales areas o f the Division. " Success in carpets grew more success in other businesses," Foster said. " We got consumers to understand what Scotchgard protector was on carpeting and that made it easier to make them aware o f Scotchgard protector in textiles." Furthermore, en thusiasm in the Division sales department kept climbing, he said, as sales personnel " realized they were part o f a real winner for the first tim e." That success and enthusiasm included sales accomplishments for Scotchban treatment for paper, which was healthy enough in 1983 to warrant its own sales force and laboratory under Manager Donald Vclky. There were good and bad things in the early days o f the Scotchgard protector program. False starts included an apparel program, chiefly girls' dresses, suit fabrics and rainwear. The attraction for 3M was the enormous size o f the market. What was not considered was that girls' dresses and suit fabrics do not require stain resistance. Mothers wash dirty dresses. Men and women have their suits dry cleaned. As for rainwear, DuPont's Zepel protector and silicone products had