Friday 29 May 2015

The Flaming Badischer! by Bob Roach


During the last Sci Bar, Bob mentioned the "Flaming Badischer Plant at ICI, here is his story in more detail. If anyone has similar stories please email me and I'll help "broadcast" them for you via the Blog site (email me, Dave Hornby on dphornby@gmail.com)

The  Flaming  Badischer

A Personal Recollection

Many people who lived in Widnes & Runcorn around 1966 to 1968 will recall the huge flame that was often emitted from the top of a flare stack at ICI’s Castner Kellner Works in Runcorn. Such was the brightness, I recall someone who lived several miles away saying it was light enough to do some gardening at 10 pm in September. The plant concerned was locally known as ‘The Badischer’.

For those of us who lived some distance away, the brightness was a curiosity. However, it was a different matter for the residents of Weston village just up the hill from the site - such was the slope of the land, the flare was more or less level with the village, and they could also hear the roar from the flame. With flaring often going on overnight, getting sleep was a problem, and with many of the local residents being employed by ICI, there was probably a reluctance to complain. 

Not so the Vicar of St John’s Church in Weston. With his church and home facing the flare, his services as well as his sleep were interrupted. When his complaints to ICI were ignored he was able to ratchet up the pressure when he somehow obtained a highly confidential list of the home phone numbers of the key managers, not only of the Castner Kellner works, but for the whole of Mond Division.

So, if the vicar was awake at night due to the light & noise from the flare, he worked his way through the list, phoning people to tell them what their flare was doing to him & his neighbours. In addition, he told them that if the flare was still alight when he got to the end of the list, he would start from the top again. As these were people who needed to be on call in case of an emergency, leaving the phone ‘off the hook’ wasn’t an option. With ICI senior managers being kept awake, there was a sudden change in ‘public relations’.

Within days, managers met the vicar to discuss his concerns and arrangements were quickly put in place to restrict the times when the flare could be used. A list went up in the plant control room identifying an early evening cut-off point and the times of services at St John’s when flaring was absolutely forbidden.

I recall being in the control room at the plant one Sunday afternoon when they were trying to settle the very temperamental plant into steady operation so as the flare could be turned off before the afternoon service at St John’s. With a couple of hours to go, staff were fairly confident they would succeed. An hour later, a problem had cropped up and the tension was building up - if they couldn’t quickly get steady operation, hours of effort to get the plant going and a great deal of fuel would have been wasted. 

What was the process about? The plant was newly built to produce acetylene, a gas that was then a key component for making other chemicals, the then increasingly popular plastic PVC in particular. The 1960s was the era of making chemicals from oil in refinery type settings. Liquid raw materials stored in tanks were pumped into reaction vessels by means of motorised valves operated from the distant control room, the staff there being dependent on information provided by instruments. The chemistry took place in these vessels, often unseen by eye. There was usually a flare stack, used at start-up & close down (particularly in an emergency) to burn off inflammable substances that couldn’t be used to produce the required product.  

As ICI didn’t know much about this sort of technology, they bought the rights to a newly developed ‘oil refinery’ type of process from BASF, a German chemical company that had originally been called Badische Anilin & Soda-Fabrik, hence the ‘Badischer’ name. Such was the eagerness of ICI to build this plant, construction commenced before BASF had properly tested its own first full size plant. 

This process was based on the fact that when oil burns, a significant amount of acetylene can be produced in the flame. However, as acetylene itself burns very readily, most will burn away in the flame that produced it. A key feature of the BASF process was to use a process called quenching that involved squirting a liquid into the flame chamber to cool the flame, so minimizing this extra burning. 

A technical challenge was the choice of substances to use to quench the flame because cheap materials like water were not suitable for the task. The chosen material was naphthalene, known to everyone from that era as the constituent of moth balls that gave them their identifiable smell (do they exist nowadays?). Although naphthalene is a solid at room temperature, at the required temperature for quenching it was liquid and could be pumped around. 

The quenching liquid also had the important job of removing from the flame chamber the carbon particles (soot) produced in the flame. As naphthalene wasn’t a cheap, it had to be recycled, and the recycling needed to take the carbon particles out of the liquid ‘sooty naphthalene’ otherwise it would soon become unusable. 

With construction going ahead at Runcorn, word came from BASF of problems with their original plan to recycle the naphthalene, namely by distilling it off in ‘kettles’ -yes, that was what they were called! The idea was to boil the naphthalene off, leaving the soot behind; then the now clean naphthalene was condensed to a liquid for re-use. In view of the difficulties, BASF advised ICI not to install kettles but to use centrifuges instead. So, with some quick and expensive re-designing, the ICI plant was built with centrifuges. However, with construction nearly complete, word came from BASF, ‘Sorry, centrifuges don’t remove the soot but we have now got the kettles working’. ‘But because of your advice we haven’t got kettles!’, said ICI.

When ICI tried to get the plant working there were lots of unreliability problems in the complex process, e.g. pumps breaking down & back-up pumps not working.  Also, the problems with centrifuges that BASF had reported soon cropped up. As a result,  ICI was having to pay to get rid of lots of ‘sooty naphthalene’ and buy lots of fresh naphthalene - such was the demand, the world price shot up.

Senior management asked, ‘Who is the Castner’s expert on centrifuges?’ No answer. Stage by stage the net was cast wider, up to ‘Who in ICI across the world knows about centrifuges?’ Still no answer. This highlighted the problem of buying technology you have no experience of! Hurriedly, a group was formed in the Research Department to try to find how to get the centrifuges working efficiently. This was how I got involved.

With work going on in two laboratory teams, a couple of us set up & ran a ‘pilot plant’ so as promising results from the small scale work in the laboratories could be tested on something like an industrial scale before being tested on the Badischer plant itself.

One thing we did was to seek the guidance of ‘technical’ staff from the three centrifuge manufacturers in Britain, one of whom had supplied the huge centrifuges on the Badischer plant that weren’t doing the job they were supposed to do. The first two were an utter waste of time - their only experience was providing centrifuges to breweries to take the yeast out of the beer so it wasn’t cloudy. They hadn’t a clue about centrifuges being used in any other setting. 

On arrival, the guy from the third firm immediately apologised for wasting our time - he had no technical knowledge but had been sent because the ‘technical’ people had refused to come. He was the most useful one we met - he confirmed what we were suspecting, namely that the ‘technical expertise’ was desperately limited to taking yeast out of beer. Also he told us of a surprising occurrence when a centrifuge was ‘wrongly’ set up but was astonishingly effective. He suggested that as manufacturers were in business to sell centrifuges, they had no interest in a curiosity that could result in their customers needing fewer centrifuges. 

On the pilot plant we used large quantities of volatile liquid chemicals, full of soot when we had finished with them, so no use to anyone. When we had about 100 drums, each containing 45 gallons, somebody had to do something with them. However, we were told that it wasn’t our responsibility & eventually they were taken away; to where, we were never told. I have always had a bit of a conscience about what happened to them. 

From our own efforts over the next 12 months we learned how to make use of the curiosity we had been told about to get the much better effectiveness. We also learned how to get those darned fine particles of soot to stick together - bigger particles would be more easily removed by a centrifuge. The next stage was to try running the two approaches together. I recall, when doing some paperwork near the pilot plant, hearing a change to the familiar sound of the centrifuge. I will always remember that when I went on to the pilot plant to see what was happening, the sloppy semi-solid black mess of carbon particles was being pushed out of the centrifuge like nothing we had seen before. Subsequent analysis of ‘soot in’ & ‘soot out’ & the repeating of the test proved we had hit on something that was dramatically effective. 

However, to implement what we proposed on the huge plant would cost a lot of money & take many months to implement. Also, the previously mentioned reliability problems of pumps and instruments continued to be a second headache.  And, by this stage, another ‘non-acetylene’ route to making PVC was becoming available. 

In the end ICI decided to abandon efforts to get the plant working. It had cost a vast sum of money - all the new cars in the plant car park and first ventures into continental holidays were evidence of this, paid for by endless overtime. 

To be reasonably brief I have omitted all sorts of personality issues, memorable moments, etc. It was generally assumed that ICI would ensure that the career of whoever ‘sorted out’ the Badischer problem would be ‘made for life’ and that those who played their part would prosper. When the pressure is on & careers can be ruined or enhanced, human nature can become very raw! In the end, no one won ‘glory’.

Suffice to say, due my Badischer experience, the ‘interpersonal dynamics’ in particular, I became aware that I was more interested in people than chemicals. This triggered a career change; I left ICI & trained as a Probation Officer & happily worked in that setting in Merseyside for over 30 years.

Well over 40 years on, that is how I recall it! If anyone has some sooty naphthalene they want to clean up, get in touch.

Before Badischer. Prior to the Badischer process, acetylene was produced at Castner Kellner Works in Runcorn by the Carbide process. In a method little changed since its invention in 1888, coke and lime were heated to 2,000oC, a temperature that required a special electric furnace. Molten calcium carbide, glowing white with the heat, was run off from the furnace into trucks where it cooled & solidified - a hot & spectacular sight. Once the carbide was made, acetylene was released by crushing it and adding water. In the early days of motor cars their lights operated in the same way, if on a much smaller scale - water was dripped on to calcium carbide and the acetylene given off was burned, giving a very bright light.

Prior to the ‘oil refinery’ type of chemical manufacture with its ‘at a distance’ operation, processes tended to rely more on physical effort & experienced ‘hands on’ control. Typical of its era, the Carbide plant required many process workers doing lots of physical work in extremely hot conditions - by repute they drank mega quantities of beer to replenish their fluids. It was an expensive way to make acetylene - but it worked. However, it did not produce the quantity required by the 1960s.

Bob Roach    Sept 2014     roach36@talktalk.net     

Thursday 28 May 2015

How relevant is the story of the birth of the Widnes chemical industry for today?

The last Widnes Sci Bar was delivered by Bob Roach (and his power point is appended in the side bar). Bob took us on a journey through the social and economic development of Widnes infused with the chemistry of the Leblanc process, and the challenges facing the early pioneers of chemical engineering. Bob's "credentials" give him an interesting "take" on the subject: he worked in the industry in the '60s (19! he's not that old!) and he has lived and worked amongst the community in Widnes, developing an affinity for the town and its citizens past and present: the view of the old and the new (soon to be added to) Mersey crossings from Ross Bullock's nice web site seems a suitable image (top LHS). My own interest in this subject has some overlaps, but I am particularly interested to see whether a detailed analysis of the origins, the growth and subsequent decline of the Chemical Industry in the "greater" Merseyside region  provides us with the insight for harnessing the developments in Biotechnology: currently under discussion under the banner of "Synthetic Biology" (take a look at the government's recent investment at Manchester University's Centre for Synthetic Biology of Fine and Speciality Chemicals). After all, one of the fundamental justifications for studying history is to avoid the mistakes of the past and perhaps more importantly anticipate the problems that might scupper a new commercial venture! 

In the beginning. Bob began his talk with a potted history of the chemistry of the Leblanc process (RHS and in more detail in Bob's presentation slides) and the bad timing (for Nicolas Leblanc!) who benefited from the patronage of Philippe, Duke of Orléans during the late 18th Century in France, which enabled him to collect the prize money offered by Louis XVI and the French Academy of Sciences. This was an attempt to reduce France's dependency on imports for its alkali production, since France had just emerged from a war with Russia. However, scholars of History will look at the dates and realise that a close relationship with the monarchy in France in the 1790s, was a bad plan; and one that was liable to lead to you losing your livelihood, if not your head! And so France's missed opportunity to capitalise on the Leblanc process was Britain's gain. I am pretty sure that since the French Revolution, this story has been repeated in industry a number of times, and the fact that the UK, the country from which Graphene came, holds around 50 patents whilst China, South Korea and the USA hold between them 5 000 on applications of Graphene, suggests that we haven't read our own history (you can read a short Guardian article here on this)!

Ludwig MondThe people. Bob provided us with a charming insight into the shakers and movers of the Chemical Industry, from the "visionary" pioneering character of  John Hutchinson, who marshaled brilliant young chemists while striking tough business deals, to the brilliant inventiveness of the polymath William Gossage. Then there was the flamboyant genius, if not somewhat precocious, Dr. Ludwig Mond (LHS), born in Germany, but in death a British citizen. However, Bob was keen to point out that on a number of fundamental issues of judgement; the otherwise brilliant, Swiss Industrial Chemist Ferdinand Hurter, was not infallible!  Importantly, he persisted with the predictability and longevity (as he thought) of the Leblanc process, when the new wave of industrialised electrochemistry was lapping at the factory walls! We were also reminded by Bob of Hurter's (and his colleague at the Gaskell-Deacon works, Vero Charles Driffield) major contributions to Photography. In fact they were jointly awarded the Progress Medal of the Royal Photographic Society in 1898).

My good friend Professor Walter Blackstock who attended the talk has provided me with some links to two books that Bob referred to, both are available to view online. 

"The white slaves of England, being true pictures of certain social conditions in the Kingdom of England in the year 1897" by Sherard, Robert Harborough, 1897, available to read at:

https://archive.org/details/whiteslavesofeng00sheruoft

and

"Some founders of the chemical industry; men to be remembered" by Allen, J. Fenwick (John Fenwick), 1907.

Contents:
I. William Gossage.--II. Josias Christopher Gamble.--III. James Muspratt.--IV. Andreas Kurtz.--V. Henry Deacon.--VI. James Shanks.--VII. Christian Allhusen.--VIII. Peter Spence.--Appendix I: Mr. William Keates

https://archive.org/details/somefoundersofch00allerich
 

The town grows. Before the boom in the Leblanc trade in Widnes, the town, a collection of hamlets in Appleton, Farnworth and Ditton, was known as Woodend. Interestingly, the population figures tell a tale of massive job creation: from around 2 500 in 1841, to 25 000 in 1881. The interviews with Alkali workers in Sherard's book are often tragic: noting of course its controversial reception and the critical comments in Hardie's take on the Chemical Industry. Thanks again Walter for the link:

Hardie's "A History of the Chemical Industry in Widnes" is currently for sale s/h on Abe for £9.99 plus £2.80 postage - a good price!

http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&tn=widnes+chemical+industry


Science and Society. Bob covered an enormous topic in a relatively short time (time flies when you are having fun!) and for me it brought back memories of school Geography lessons: Hutchinson's visionary instincts about location,  resources, supply chains and transport, are great lessons in business location. The consequences of unfettered growth in the absence of a parallel programme of Health and Safety legislation and the poor consideration for sustainability, are lessons that we need to take form this story. Then of course we have the rise of worker's rights, pay and conditions and the rise of Socialism as a third way from the Victorian "toing and froing" of Whig and Tory politics (sound familiar?). These events paved the way for the latter day, generous and ground-breaking terms of employment given to employees at Unilever and ICI in this region in the middle of the last century. Finally, let us not forget the influence of two World Wars on the Chemical Industry: this mix of politics, society, economics, geography, chemistry, culture, inward migration, work-life balance and education were all touched on in Bob's fascinating presentation

Lessons from our Legacy. As a final, personal thought, we have our Catalyst Museum (LHS) in Widnes which is the Guardian of the tremendous legacy of our region's Chemical Industry heritage: good and bad! But I believe the History of the Chemical Industry in Widnes is a story that should be understood and promoted much more widely. The events that Bob surveyed for us, provides so much valuable wisdom for those charged with the responsibility of investing in, or regulating, the industries of the future; whether it is Biotechnology, Smart Materials, Software, Hardware, Electronics, Nanotechnology, Renewable Energy etc. etc. The History of the Chemical Industry in Widnes, like that of the Textile Industry in Lancashire, or the Shipping Industry in Liverpool and Glasgow,  holds so many valuable lessons for us as we try and build new sustainable industries, and create new jobs for the coming generations. 

Thanks Bob for a thoroughly enjoyable evening and Walter Blackstock for the information: I would stress that these are my own views.