Bean Blast

In Chicago last week a coroner's jury made up of five industrial engineers and a chemistry professor was sworn in over six dead bodies. Then they went out to the city's northwest side to learn, if they could, why a soy-bean processing plant occupying almost a block lay in smoking ruins, with scorched and mangled human flesh still inside. ''Obviously,'' said the coroner, "such an investigation could not be conducted by laymen.''

Day before Glidden Co.'s Soya Products Division six-story building--once a bootleg brewery--was humming with routine activity. Tons of soy-bean mash seethed in huge vats. An unlucky janitor, going to lunch, turned back to get his coat. That was the last anyone saw of him alive. Suddenly the walls of the building flew out like the staves of a collapsing barrel. Two freight cars beside the loading platform were reduced to chips. Bodies of workmen landed in the street, one 50 ft. from the plant. A water tank sailed through the air, smashed an automobile flat as a cockroach. Shattered gas mains spread a sickening stench. Firemen, menaced by loops of live wires, were afraid to cut into the shambles with acetylene torches because of fumes. The last of the dead was not removed until four days after the blast. Toll: eleven killed, 45 injured.

To get soy-bean oil for paints, varnishes and soft soap, soy beans are crushed into flakes, treated with hydrocarbon solvent such as hexane or benzene. The oil and the solvent are filtered off. The solvent is recovered from the oil by distillation; from the mash by steaming under pressure. Last week's jury of scientists looked along this line of operations for vulnerable spots. They found that two 4,000-gal. tanks of hexane had not exploded. Neither had the two 50,000-gal. oil storage tanks, nor the stills, nor the pressure apparatus. The blast, in fact, seemed to have originated in the flaking room, might have been due to a dust explosion.

Soy beans were prized in China 5,000 years ago, were first brought to the U. S. in 1804 by a Yankee clipper. Most famed U. S. soy-bean user is Henry Ford, devout believer in manufacturing as an outlet for agricultural products. In 20 small, scattered factories. Ford has been making a hard, easily cleaned enamel from the bean oil, and from the bean meal, such molded plastic parts as horn buttons, gear lever caps, dash panels and distributor covers. This year Ford will use the crop from 61,500 soy-bean acres.

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