Buna rubber

Acceptable for exo if used with buna rubber plates and rollers. 

The process of anionic polymerisation was first used some 60 or more years ago in the sodium-catalysed production of polybutadiene (Buna Rubbers). Typical catalysts include alkali metals, alkali metal alkyls and sodium naphthalene, and these may be used for opening either a double bond or a ring structure to bring about polymerisation. Although the process is not of major importance with the production of plastics materials, it is very important in the production of synthetic rubbers. In addition the method has certain special features that make it of particular interest. 

In 1839, Charles Goodyear discovered that sulfur could cross-link polymer chains and patented the process in 1844 [1]. Since then rubber became a widely usable material. By the year 1853, natural rubber (NR) was in short supply. So attempts were made to undo what Goodyear had accomplished. Goodyear himself was involved in trying to reclaim vulcanized rubber to overcome the shortage of NR. Later, as a consequence of World War I, Germany introduced synthetic rubbers, namely the Buna rubbers, which raised the curiosity of polymer chemists all over the world. Subsequently, synthetic rubbers with tailor-made properties were born. This was followed by the discovery of new methods and chemicals for vulcanization and processing. It is obvious... 

The judges of the court listened as the soldiers had, as if waiting for a twig to crackle. Somehow the fortunes of war had placed this picture of a spotless industrial installation in a horrible setting, beside a river (not the calm Hudson or the turbulent Rhine) that ran red with a dye no chemist could synthesize. There sprawled the buna-rubber plant, and three kilometers away was a concentra-... 

Some of the Farben factories made products that were interchangeable for peace or war — buna rubber, synthetic gasoline, and the ethylene oxide that would yield either Prestone or poison gas. 

We looked at the dates and places of incarceration, and the dates of all Von Schnitzler s 1945 statements, and the facts led straight to one man — Dr. Fritz ter Meer, the great developer of the buna-rubber process. 

All I m saying is that we can use a simpler method of proof from now on, one that would reflect back on the proof that s already in. It s hard to take the rearmament up the line. It s not so hard with some of the things that happened at Auschwitz. For example, Farben built its buna-rubber plant near Auschwitz and put the engineer Duerrfeld in charge. And then we show that Duerrfeld s boss, Ambros, knew that concentration-camp inmates were being used at the plant, and he reported this to Ter Meer and the other members of the technical committee. But these technical-committee members were also members of the board. In this way we can show not only what kind of men these defendants are, but also begin to show responsibility all the way up to the top."... 

Buna rubber — a challenging loan on future scientific genius Ter Meer dismissed his doubts. Buna would be a "free-enterprise (or limited) self-sufficiency," which Farben itself could create and control. 

But one couldn t look back to 1936 and say that Ter Meer, skeptically studying the influence of buna on Farben s fortunes and on the economy as a whole, could foresee that full employment sometimes brings greater evils than unemployment. Auschwitz existed then only as a "buna plant to the east." The name "Auschwitz" did not yet exist, except as the German translation for a little Polish town in Upper Silesia. Not until 1937 did full employment and "buna autarchy" begin to move eastward, driven by more than the danger of financial failure. In that year, said Ter Meer, "political reasons" dictated an abnormal expansion of most of Farben s plants, with the biggest emphasis on buna rubber. 

Had Ter Meer heard the rats scurrying in the pantry he had stocked so well — then turned away From the very method by which the Farben intermediates were distributed, from the abnormal expansion of buna rubber, could he not sense that industrial terror would come to "the East" ... 

These "discoveries" were to include old but impracticable processes if new know-how were discovered. Buna rubber—made from coal, water, and air—was not yet produced on a commercial scale. Therefore, the whole deal would be less unequal, because Standard at least had a stake in the development of buna. Farben agreed to turn into the pool each new improvement so that Standard could also make, improve, and sell buna rubber at will. 

On direct examination by his defense counsel, Ter Meer had stated that in 1936 the German government issued an order prohibiting the giving of the know-how for processing and manufacture of buna rubber to anyone in the United States. 

Buetefisch then looked over the Auschwitz site. Plans for the buna-rubber plant were ready. "So the power plants, the roads and waterways and individual buildings that had originally been planned for rubber had to be planned again — to have one power plant only, one waterworks, one pipe bridge, and one waterway and this project bad to be pushed very quickly so that one could catch up with the others."... 

Loeb s first clash with Krauch was over buna rubber. Loeb had estimated peacetime needs at fifty tons of buna per month. In February 1936, Krauch went over Loeb s head and pushed through a Farben contract for two hundred tons a month. Then four months later, when the Four Year Plan was inaugurated, Krauch held a conference and failed to invite Loeb. To Krauch s office came representatives of the Air Ministry and the Army Ordnance. From Farben came Ter Meer and Kuehne, another... 

Mr. Teagie would be coming to Berlin to try again to get from Ter Meer the long-deferred buna-rubber process. 

Carl Krauch also was dissatisfied with the speed of the rearmament. In his feud with General Loeb (begun when Loeb had accused him of pushing an "abnormal expansion" of buna rubber), there had been an uneasy truce. Loeb had flared up occasionally when Professor Krauch left his own office to peek over the General s shoulders. Now Krauch kept Ambros opinion in the background and began to attack the problem, step by step. 

On the 30th of June 1938, he handed to Goering "a new accelerated plan for explosives, gunpowder, intermediates, and chemical-warfare agents," incorporating the recommendations of Am-bros. Less than two weeks later, he finished a supplement which included buna rubber, synthetic oils, and gasoline and light metals. 

Mobilization Target, Buna Rubber from 70,000 tons in 1937 to 120 000 tons in 11138. 

But most of the infantry rolled on seven-league wheels. All the tanks, the half-tracks, the squad cars rolled on buna rubber. General Loeb s fear that the production of 2000 tons of buna every month would lead to war was sevenfold outmoded now. In the first four days 2000 tons were made—before the mechanized columns reached the outskirts of Warsaw. (In 1938 Farben had made 5000 tons of rubber while the Reich imported 97,000 tons in this first year of war the figures were to be almost reversed, and by 1943 Farben was to make Germany an important exporter of rubber.)... 

Otto Ambros Production chief for buna rubber and poison... 

Vinyl-type addition polymerization can also be carried out with acidic catalysis such as boron tnfluoride or tin tetrachloride and with basic catalysis such as alkali melals or alkali alkyls. An example of the first ease is the low-temperature polymerization of isobutene, which gives Vistanex" and butyl rubber an example of the second type is the polymerization of butadiene with sodium, which leads to buna rubber. 

Frank A. Howard, Buna Rubber The Birth of an Industry (New York, 1947), p. 3. 

In 1920, a German chemist produced an artificial rubber by polymerizing butadiene obtained from petroleum. This rubber was named BuNa rubber (Bu from butadiene and Na from the sodium which was used as the catalyst in the reaction)... 

FIGURE 3-49 BUNA rubber, a styrene/butadiene random copolymer made by emulsion polymerization manufacture, circa 1940s (Courtesy Bayer). 

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