The New Chemistry

The piece of cobalt pipe is not impressive looking. It is only 13 in. long and 2 in. in diameter, but it is more radio active than the world's entire stock of refined radium. The pipe will be the star in a new kind of chemical laboratory that Standard Oil Development Co. is building at Linden, N.J. The lab. the first of its kind and scale in private industry (cost: $1,000,000), will use atomic radiation to promote chemical reactions. In preparation for the plant's completion, the cobalt pipe has been absorbing neutrons for 24-years at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Long Island.

When not in use, the dangerous "source" will be kept in a well in the floor of a heavily shielded chamber. To put it to work, the scientists will first clear out of the chamber. Then, watching through a lead-glass window 3 ft. thick, they will lift it with remotely controlled "hands" and set it where its gamma rays can strike through mixtures of chemicals.

What will happen next is almost anyone's guess. The rays pack a lot of energy, and when they hit molecules in the mixture, they will tear them apart by breaking chemical bonds. Since the broken places are highly reactive, they will grab the nearest suitable atom, thus creating molecules of new compounds. They will speed up familiar reactions, start unfamiliar ones, and form compounds that the chemists have never seen before.

Standard Oil's scientists are primarily interested in oil refining. They hope that gamma rays will do the job of high pressure, high temperature and conventional catalysts--all of which are expensive. But "radiation catalysis" has possibilities far beyond oil refining. It can cause "polymerization"; i.e., join molecules of a liquid into solid, plasticlike substances. By making a reaction proceed at low temperature, it can produce valuable compounds that would be destroyed by the heat of an ordinary chemical reaction.

The single cobalt radiation source, which will cost Standard more than $17,000, is not powerful enough for a full-scale production setup. If the company decides to build an atomic oil refinery, it is thinking of using a nuclear reactor as a lavish source of radiation. Its scientists hope that by that time reactors will be safe enough to trust in a populated area.

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