Document emrZE62nVBy9yD2w42GBN4dv9

34 I technical week JAN 1 6 1975 European Chemical News, November 8, 1974 UK sets up waste materials exchange. shintech. the joint venture between Shin-Etsu Chemical and Robintech, has a united Kingdom waste materials ex* change is to be established by the UK Department of Industry. The service will be operated initially for two years by the Warren Spring Laboratory at Stevenage and will be bee to partici pants. The exchange, which has been set up following representations by a group of industrial environmental specialists on behalf of UK chemical companies, is expected to make a marked contribu tion to the conservation of resources and the prevention of pollution, accord ing to the Department. It should also help to reduce the costs of achieving acceptable disposal under the provisions of the Deposit of Poisonous Waste Act 1972 and the Con trol of Pollution Act 1974, the Depart ment added. Similar exchanges have been set up by West Germany, and Scandinavia at the instigation of Sweden, but little has been heard so far on how these have Materials Recovery Association, the Department of Industry noted. Commercial confidentiality will be maintained throughout the operation of the exchange. A registry will be kept of the notification of waste and of materials required and a quarterly bulletin issued listing materials. Forms for notifying waste arisings and requirements will be included with each copy. Inquiries for a particular material will then be forwarded on a confidential basis to the company originating the waste so that they can make their own commercial arrange ments for disposing of it Companies disposing of material with the help of the exchange will be asked to inform the registry to help monitor performance. Direct invitations to participate will be sent to some 25 000-30 000 organiza tions to assist with compiling an initial list of people wishing to receive the bulletin and to contribute materials for successfully started up its new 100 000 ton/year PVC facility at Freeport in Texas, USA. The plant, which was started up on schedule in mid-October, is based on Shin-Etsu's new PVC tech nology (ECN, April 27, 1973) and is ex pected to go into full operation during the course of this month. Official in auguration of the plant is set for December 6,1974. Shin-Etsu has licensed its PVC tech nology to a number of PVC manufac turers around the world, but Shintech is the first company outside Japan to bean production. Robintech, the largest PVC pipe manufacturer in the USA, operates its In Kettle Compound process in its existing PVC plants in which the PVC is directly extruded from the reactors, thereby avoiding the need to periodi cally open them up. Shin-Etsu's new technology has en abled the prevention of polymer de posits on reactor walls to be achieved, resulting in complete avoidance of the worked out in practice. inclusion. need for operators to enter the reactors The UK exchange will be concerned These will be addressed to the head for cleaning purposes. This break with waste materials originating from office in the case of large organizations through either alone or in combination manufacturing processes in general but and these are being asked to ensure cir with Robintech's IKC technology excluding wastes from domestic sources culation to the individual production means that the plant will be able to and those scrap metals, second-hand units within the large groups. meet the new stringent regulations on equipment and other materials for After this initial approach, firms that vinyl chloride levels in PVC plants. which adequate commercial markets have not been contacted directly and already exist. These could, for example, who wish to participate will be asked Combined Technology be referred to the National Industrial to contact the exchange directly. Shin-Etsu has stated to ECN that, although the new Shintech PVC plant Daicel develops synthetic fatty amines has started operations utilizing only Shin-Etsu's technology, Shin-Etsu, in daicel of Osaka. Japan, has developed the first synthetic route to fatty amines to the commercial stage, according to Japanese reports. The company has already started experimental synthetic fatty amine production and expects to reach a production level of 5000 ton/ year in the near future. Fatty amines, which are used in widely different fields such as textile processing aids and emulsifiers, are nor mally produced entirely from synthetic materials such as tallow and palm oil. These materials show the typical price cycles of natural products, and Daicel has high hopes that its new process will help to remove Japan's total dependence on imported raw materials in the fatty amines sector. The process involves the use of Daicel's epoxidation technology which it uses to produce glycerine from propy lene using peracetic acid. In an analogous reaction, in the fatty amines process, alpha olefines are epoxidized acted with ethylamine or a similar amine to give fatty amine. Daicel states that the process is more simple to operate than the process based on the natural products and that it does not involve the use of chlorine or caustic soda, which could lead to the formation of pollution-causing by products. Bayer cyclamate licence yoshitomi Pharmaceutical- Industries is to provide Bayer with its sodium cyclamate manufacturing know-how, under a technological agreement which was recently signed. Bayer apparently intends to commercialize the artificial sweetener in West Germany, and has reportedly paid $100000 for the know how. The deal is raising eyebrows in the pharmaceutical industry as produc tion of sodium cyclamate for sweeteners is prohibited in Japan be cause of its risks as a cancer-forming co-operation with the Robintech re search and development department, are exploring the application of Robintech's IKC process to Shin-Etsu's new PVC technology. It is expected by Shin-Etsu that the combination of the two tech nologies will be completed in the near future. Vinyl chloride monomer for the new Shintech PVC plant is being supplied on a 10-year contract by pipeline from the nearby Dow Chemical Oyster Creek plant, according to US reports. It has already been announced that the PVC plant is being expanded by 68 000 ton/year for completion by January, 1976. Robintech itself has 114000 ton/ year of PVC capacity in operation at its Painesville, Ohio, complex. Shin-Etsu's PVC process is centred round giant reactors of 130m' capacity and are described by the company as some of the largest in use commer cially. Hills is reported to have de veloped PVC reactors of 200m' capa city and brought the first one of this to alpha olefine oxides, which are re agent. size on stream earlier this year. OLI 3307