Document rkdD4Ze3zJpdw2Lrb1qYbJ50

x 1953, Consolidated Chemical In dustries Inc., published a handsome 104-page book in connection with the 7 5th anniversary of the company. From this book we extract the follow ing highlights of the company's growth and activities. The company goes back to the Pacific Bone, Coal and Fertilizing Company which began in 1878. It teas a manufacturer of animal char coal and animal glues. A separate affiliated company, the Texas Chemi cal Company, was organized in 1917, and an animal charcoal plant was built on the Houston ship channel. The bone char from this plant, used as a decolorizing and filtering agent, serves American and world-wide sugar refineries. The by-products, I>onc meal and bone flour, arc used its cattle feed and fertilizer. To serve the rapidly expanding petroleum industry in the Southwest, the company built its first sulphuric acid plant in 1919, at Houston. It had a capacity of 30 tons per day. Anticipating the phenomenal dc- velopmcnt to take place in the South west, the rompany kept gradually increasing its sulphuric acid produc tion to 100 tons per day in 1925. In the same year another subsidiarv, the Louisiana Chemical Company, was formed at Baton Rouge and went on stream at the rate of 45 tons of sulphu ric acid per day. Four years later in 1929 the production at Baton Rouge was up to 106 tons per day and Houston was proudly doing 145 tons per day. In 1929 three new plants were, completed. The first was at Fort Worth to produce sulphuric acid, muriatic acid, salt cake or po tassium sulphate. Another at Bastrop, Louisiana, in the heart of the finest tiinbcrland of the South, produces paper makers' alum for the largest paper mills in the country. A third 7'his Elliott turbine-driven centrifugal compressor in the Baton Range plant is rated 20,400 inlet cfm, inlet pressure 14.7psia, discharge pressure 87 in. of water. It is driven by a 37S-hp, 3800-rpm steam turbine taking steam at 225 psig and exhausting to an Elliott surface condenser like the one shown on the following page. Aerial view at left shows Consolidated Chemical's Houston A view of the Fort Worth plant is shown at top of page.