Sodium dispersion chemistry development

Dr. Bill Coleman, for several chemical steps in Syntex s synthesis of the oral contraceptive chlormadinone. With Haldor Christensen, sodium dispersion chemistry led to a superior process for the manufacture of the Eh Lilly herbicide, diphenamid. We devised novel patented chemistry, with the inspiration of Dr. Martin Hultquist, for the manufacture of DDQ. The list could go on and on, but the essence is that in Arapahoe we became chemical process development chemists. We learned that there were no such chemists as steroid chemists, organometallic chemists, heterocyclic chemists, and so on. There are only process development chemists, capable of synthesizing anything. Being scientists in a small company we also learned to accommodate other disciplines and business requirements in creating our chemical processes. 

Rose et al. (1996) described the development of a SCP characterisation for oil and coal fuel-types, using particle chemistries determined by energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS). This technique is described as semi-quantitative as the results are expressed as a percentage of the total of elements selected for analysis. Additionally, the EDS detector used was unable to determine elements lighter than sodium, and thus carbon and oxygen, most probably the major constituents in SCPs (c.f. traffic-derived soot Fruhstorfer Niessner, 1994), were not measurable and do not appear in the total. However, rather than being a drawback, this had a positive effect as the 17 trace elements analysed consequently appeared to be much more important to the particle composition than in reality, and it was these, rather than the carbon content, which were used in differentiating between the fuel-types. 

---