Hercules Company

In 1975 the Hercules company announced the preparation of a polymer very similar in structure to the discontinued Penton. The new polymer is poly-(1,2-dichloromethyl)ethylene oxide ... 

Marketing research challenges for the 1960 s were very aptly put forth on a similar forum back in 1959 by W. G. Kinsinger of Hercules Company. How many of these challenges were actually met in the past decade I believe that progress was made on all of them. However, I question whether they were completely met the way it was thought they should be. I plan to review briefly several of them. 

This work was supported by grants from the Army Research Office and the Hercules Company. Professor Douglas R. Miller assisted us In the derivations. 

Drew Chemical Corporation (Ashland Chemical, Inc.) Exxon Chemical Company Hercules, Inc. 

Precipitators are currently used for high collection efficiency on fine particles. The use of electric discharge to suppress smoke was suggested in 1828. The principle was rediscovered in 1850, and independently in 1886 and attempts were made to apply it commercially at the Dee Bank Lead Works in Great Britain. The installation was not considered a success, probably because of the cmde electrostatic generators of the day. No further developments occurred until 1906 when Frederick Gardiner Cottrell at the University of California revived interest (U.S. Pat. 895,729) in 1908. The first practical demonstration of a Cottrell precipitator occurred in a contact sulfuric acid plant at the Du Pont Hercules Works, Pinole, California, about 1907. A second installation was made at Vallejo Junction, California, for the Selby Smelting and Lead Company. 

The world s largest producers are Perstorp AB (Sweden, United States, Italy), Hoechst Celanese Corporation (United States, Canada), Degussa (Germany), and Hercules (United States) with estimated 1989 plant capacities of 65,000, 59,000, 30,000, and 22,000 t/yr, respectively. Worldwide capacity for pentaerythritol production was 316,000 t in 1989, about half of which was from the big four companies. Most of the remainder was produced in Asia (Japan, China, India, Korea, and Taiwan), Europe (Italy, Spain), or South America (Brazil, Chile). The estimated rate of production for 1989 was about 253,000 t or about 80% of nameplate capacity. 

Most commercial processes produce polypropylene by a Hquid-phase slurry process. Hexane or heptane are the most commonly used diluents. However, there are a few examples in which Hquid propylene is used as the diluent. The leading companies involved in propylene processes are Amoco Chemicals (Standard OH, Indiana), El Paso (formerly Dart Industries), Exxon Chemical, Hercules, Hoechst, ICl, Mitsubishi Chemical Industries, Mitsubishi Petrochemical, Mitsui Petrochemical, Mitsui Toatsu, Montedison, Phillips Petroleum, SheU, Solvay, and Sumimoto Chemical. Eastman Kodak has developed and commercialized a Hquid-phase solution process. BASE has developed and commercialized a gas-phase process, and Amoco has developed a vapor-phase polymerization process that has been in commercial operation since early 1980. 

Rosin and its derivatives are economically the most important natural resins. Approximately 1150 x 10 metric tons of these materials are produced annually and sold throughout the world. The principal producers are the People s RepubHc of China (ca 40%) and the United States (ca 25%), followed by Russia. Most of the remainder is produced in Indonesia, Portugal, Finland, India, Bra2il, and Mexico. In 1996, the lowest grades of rosin were priced at 750/t. Most rosin is converted to its many derivatives to meet requirements for industrial appHcations. The principal producers of rosin derivatives are Ari2ona Chemical Company, Hercules Incorporated, Westvaco, Union Camp, and Georgia-Pacific. 

Aqualon Cellulose Gum, Sodium Carboyjmethjlcellulose, Fhjsicaland ChemicalFroperties, Aqualon Co., a Hercules Incorporated Company, Wilmington, Del, 1988. 

In the early 1950s novel polyethers were prepared in the laboratories of the Hercules Powder Company and of Imperial Chemical Industries Limited from oxacyclobutane derivatives. One such polyether that from 3,3-dichloromethyl-1-oxacyclobutane, was marketed by the first named company in 1959 under the trade name of Penton. Commercial manufacture of this material had, however, ceased by the end of 1972. 

Hydroxy propyl cellulose, like methyl cellulose, is soluble in cold water but not in hot, precipitating above 38°C. It was introduced by Hercules in 1968 (Klucel) for such uses as adhesive thickeners, binders, cosmetics and as protective colloids for suspension polymerisation. The Dow company market the related hydroxypropylmethyl cellulose (Methocel) and also produce in small quantities a hydroxyethylmethyl cellulose. 

The chairman of the CCPS Equipment Reliability Data Subconunittee was S. Barry Gibson, E.I. du Pont de Nemours Co., Inc. The subcommittee members were Harold W Thomas, Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. William H. Ciolek, Amoco Corporation Joseph C. Sweeney, ARCO Chemical Company Brian D. Berkey, Hercules Incorporated Gary R. Van Sciver, Rohm and Haas Company and William K. Lutz, Union Carbide Corporation. Thomas W. Carmody and Lester H. Wittenberg of the Center for Chemical Process Safety were responsible for the overall administration and coordination of this project. 

NOTE Early polyalkylene polyamide antifoam formulations (1940s) developed by Dearborn Chemical Company (now G.E. Betz, formerly Hercules Betz-Dearborn) employed protective colloid technology. These products generally were in powder or briquette form. 

Company, 45,122,132306,416,428,490,521 Dow Chemical USA, 256 DSM Research, 213 E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, 115,147360 Ford Motor Company, 190 The Glidden Company Research Center, 13 Hercules Incorporate 174 Hexcel Corporation, 270 ICI Paints, 438,454 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 270 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 74,107... 

Many instrumentation companies have commercialized complete or modular CE systems. The principal vendors are Beckman Instruments, Inc. (Fullerton, CA) Bio-Rad Laboratories (Hercules, CA) Dionex Co. (Sunnyvale, CA) Hewlett Packard (Palo Alto, CA) ISCO, Inc. (Lincoln, NE) Otsuka, Ltd. (Tokyo, Japan) Perkin-Elmer -ABI (Foster City, CA) Thermo-Separation Products (Fremont, CA) and Waters Associates (Milford, MA). 

Acknowledgment is made of assistance in the chemical work by A. C. Hazen, H. D. Mann, and P. E. Hubanks. The infrared spectroscopic examination was made by W. C. Kenyon, Hercules Powder Company, Wilmington, Del. 

Hercules Powder Company, private communication to API Subcommittee on Corrosion. 

Sometimes a company will build a larger plant because it expects the reduced prices will open new markets. This, of course, would not be done without some strong indications that the new markets would develop. In 1969, Hercules announced that nitrosyl chloride, which was then sold in cylinders at 5- 8 per pound, would be sold in bulk at 2- 3 per pound. It was also stated that when the sales exceeded 1,000,000 lb/yr the price was expected to drop below 0.50 per pound. They had built a plant that could produce 1, 000,000 lb/yr but only had a market of 200,000 lb/yr. Their marketing experts estimated that the reduction in price could cause a five-fold increase in the demand in only three years.5... 

DEZ [Diethyl zinc] A process for preserving books and documents by treatment with diethyl zinc vapor, which neutralizes ary residual acidity from the papermaking process. The articles are placed in a low-pressure chamber and suffused by diethyl zinc vapor. This vapor reacts with the moisture in the paper to yield zinc oxide, which neutralizes the acid. The process was developed by Texas Alkyls (a joint company of Akzo and Hercules) and the U S. Library of Congress. A pilot plant was set up in 1988, capable of treating batches of 300 books, and plans to build two larger plants were announced in 1989. 

Hercules (1) An organic nitration process, similar to the Bofors process but using a tee-joint for mixing. Developed by the Hercules Powder Company, Wilmington, DE, from 1957. U.S. Patents 2,951,746 2,951,877. 

The first commercial CE instruments were introduced in 1988 by Applied Biosystems (Foster City, CA) and Beckman Coulter (Fullerton, CA). The main challenge during these days was to find out how to overcome poor reproducibility and improve separation efficiency. In the early 1990s, many instrument-building companies introduced CE systems (e.g. Isco (Lincoln, NE), Bio-Rad (Hercules, CA), Waters (Milford, MA), Applied Biosystems, ThermoQuest (Santa Fe, NM) and Dionex (Sunnyvale, CA)), but at the end of the decade only Beckman Coulter... 

Industry, seeing a need for training those employed by them in the art and science of polymer chemistry, began to experiment. Certain groups with common research interests and needs joined together to form societies which in turn offered short courses typically in areas of very specialized applications. Societies active in these ventures include SPE, PRI, ACS, APS and SPI. Several companies such as Hercules, Monsanto, and DuPont sponsored or permitted informal courses in polymer related topics to be presented during company time and/or using company facilities. The "teachers" or discussion leaders could be either one of the participants or an invited academic or industrial "expert". These "in-house" courses have increased in popularity and today are part of many companies schedules of activity. 

With the end of World War II in August 1945, the United States War Department had available at Louisiana, Missouri a high-pressure synthetic ammonia plant formerly operated by the Hercules Powder Company. The Bureau of Mines acquired this plant on February 1,... 

An alternative route to DMT was introduced in 1953. This was based on air oxidation of y -xylene to /Moluic acid, which was esterified by methanol to form methyl /Moluate, which was oxidised by air to monomethyl terephthalate [40], which in turn was esterified by methanol to make DMT. The two oxidations could be combined so that p-xylene and methyl p-toluate were oxidised in the same vessel, and so could the two esterifications [41], The process was due to Katzschmann of Imhausen, a firm based at Witten and later known as Chemische Werke Witten. This process, known variously by its inventor s name and by various combinations of the names of the companies involved in its development, i.e. Hercules, Imhausen, Witten, and Dynamit Nobel, rapidly replaced the rather unsatisfactory and sometimes hazardous nitric acid oxidation route to DMT. 

The oldest cresol production method used in the United States is through the recovery of fractional distillates from coal tars. Most domestic cresols are formed via catalytic and thermal cracking of naphtha fractions during petroleum distillation. Since 1965, quantities of coal tar and petroleum isolates have been insufficient to meet the rising demand. Consequently, several processes for the manufacture of the various isomers have been developed. One General Electric facility produces o-cresol at an annual capacity of 10,000 tons by the methylation of phenol in the presence of catalysts. The Sherman-Williams Company uses the toluene sulfonation process and maintains an annual capacity for p-cresol of 15,000 tons. The Hercules Powder Company produced p-cresol until 1972 by the cymene- cresol process. 

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