Chemical Eng'rs at Du Pont's

During the grand rally which tycoons, farmers' spokesmen, chemists, propagandists and journalists conducted at Henry Ford's Dearborn, Mich. fortnight ago to transform farm products into factory goods, chemical engineers emerged as key men of the entire procedure.

Last week 521 such chemical engineers assembled at Pierre Samuel du Font's, Wilmington, Del. to tell each other some major developments of their year.

Mr. du Pont treated his guests more handsomely than Mr. Ford treated his guests the week before. After giving the tycoons, farmers' spokesmen, chemists, propagandists and journalists a neat New Englandish lunch, Mr. Ford took his richest guest, Irenee du Pont (middle brother), away for a private conference. Pierre du Pont regaled his guests, practically every last man of whom would have liked a job with the Du Ponts, with a splendid twilight dinner in the ballroom of his gorgeous greenhouse. An organ recital soothed the diners, and colored lights playing on the estate's fountains added more blandishments. But when it came to examining Du Pont manufacturing processes, the visiting chemical engineers saw as little as Du Pont chemical engineers permitted them to see.

Of manufacturing items and procedures which the engineers discussed, the following attracted most attention: Yielding metal disks to replace safety valves in tanks which contain corrosive gases; pure, unyielding platinum, gold and silver to line tubes and machinery; porous bricks which act as heat insulators; shipping highly reactive compounds of sodium in tank cars so full that no air or water can get in to deteriorate them; production on a vast scale at Wilson Dam of phosphatic fertilizers cheap enough to persuade Tennessee Valley farmers to refresh their exhausted, eroding soil.

During the past year U. S. students of chemical engineering, anticipating similar problems when they find jobs, worked on this practical practice problem: Select equipment for the recovery of acetone from a mixture of acetone and air by means of an absorption tower, using water as the absorbent. Students were obliged to deduce a plant of the most economical type and to calculate its annual operating cost. They also had to design certain auxiliaries, such as a heat exchanger, a condenser, and a still boiler, and to figure the most economical way of running the whole system.

Best solution was by Burwell Spurlok, 25, recently married son of a York, Neb. lawyer, Grinnell (Iowa) College A.B., onetime Harvard law student, onetime jobhunter, who expects to graduate next month from the University of Colorado College of Engineering. His reward: $100. A fact which the American Institute of Chemical Engineers found significant to the continuing success of U. S. industry: "Not only was the quality of winning solutions better than in previous years, but also there were this year more good solutions and few really poor ones.

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