The Automobile Industry

Corrosion of automobiles is well documented (49-51). Environmental factors such as the deicing salts on the roads and temperature fluctuations have profound effects on automobiles. The cars are expected to survive the grinding effect of gravel, offer comfortable proteetion to the passengers, should be easily and economically repairable on damage with a reasonable service life. 

A code for Canada in 1981 specified (i) a car body should last 1.5 years or 60,000 km before suffering cosmetic corrosion, 5 years (200,000 km) for perforation corrosion, and 6 years (240,000 km) for structural corrosion. The code projected for North America in 1990 was to have no cosmetic in 5 years and no perforation corrosion in 10 years. These code requirements resulted in the use of precoated steel, especially galvanized steel, which in 1993 satisfied the requirements (52). 

In 1981, about 3 million passenger cars and commercial vehicles were being scrapped in Europe beeause of three eauses accidents, obsolescence, and corrosion. McArthur showed a correlation between the number of serious injuries suffered in road accidents and the age as well as the amount of corrosion of the vehicle (53). A corroded vehicle was less able to absorb the energy of impact than that of a new vehicle. The average life of a motor car has increased over the years since the auto industry had at last reacted to the public demand for more corrosion protection. 

Rust proofing treatments of cars have not been very successful, and the Office of the Attorney General of New York State claimed that consumers were defrauded of 11 million annually because of poor quality rust treatments. 

In spite of the tendency to rust, iron either alone or as reinforcement in concrete has been the basis of civil engineering projects since the world s first iron bridge was constructed over River Severn at Coalbrookdale in England by Abraham Darby in 1780. Many wrought iron bridges performed well with modest but regular maintenance. 

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Alkylated phenol derivatives are used as raw materials for the production of resins, novolaks (alcohol-soluble resins of the phenol—formaldehyde type), herbicides, insecticides, antioxidants, and other chemicals. The synthesis of 2,6-xylenol [576-26-1] h.a.s become commercially important since PPO resin, poly(2,6-dimethyl phenylene oxide), an engineering thermoplastic, was developed (114,115). The demand for (9-cresol and 2,6-xylenol (2,6-dimethylphenol) increased further in the 1980s along with the growing use of epoxy cresol novolak (ECN) in the electronics industries and poly(phenylene ether) resin in the automobile industries. The ECN is derived from o-cresol, and poly(phenylene ether) resin is derived from 2,6-xylenol. 

Supplier partnerships or alliances have been used to control the cost of procurement. They are based on methods developed in Japan, initially in the automobile industry. These methods have been extended into the process industry and for the purchase of such items as compressor trains. Generally as originally conceived, they were intended mainly for commodity items. By using some innovative approaches, the concept of partnerships or alliances has been extended into the purchase of custom equipment. 

Higher specifications, particularly by the automobile industries, have led to their replacement by rubbers of higher performance in terms of heat and oil resistance. 

Better resistance to many chemicals associated with the automobile industry. This covers not only commonly used automobile fuels, oils and greases, but detergents, alcohols, aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons and alkaline chemicals. 

Natural rubber can be obtained from the sap of a number of plants and trees, the most common source is the Hevea brasiliensis tree. Although natural rubber was known in Central and South America before the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492, the first use as an adhesive was established in a patent dated in 1891. As rubber became an important part of the industrial revolution, the rubber adhesives market grew in importance. To comply with the increasing demand on natural rubber materials, plantations of Hevea brasiliensis trees were established in southeast Asia in the early 20th Century, mainly to supply the demand from the automobile industry. 

While these and many other contemporary quality policies would not need to be publicized 20 or so years ago, policy statements are not something new to the automobile industry. The General Motors of the 1920s under the direction of Alfred P Sloan used corporate policy as a means of coordinating the efforts of several divisions. GM s quality policy was to build quality products sold at fair prices and in setting up an Executive Gommittee Sloan wrote on the subject of quality, A carefully designed policy should be... 

There are lots of regulations and no guarantees of finding them all. However, you can now search through libraries on the Internet and consult bureaus, trade associations, and government departments to discover those that apply to you. Ignorance of the law, they say, is no excuse. So here are a few consequences related to the automobile industry that you may rather avoid ... 

Power and torque are directly related. An automobile engine develops power when producing a torque on the dnvetrain. Generally, the owner of an automobile is more interested in power than torque. Flowever, technicians in the automobile industry usually evaluate the performance in terms of torque... 

The polymer field is versatile and fast growing, and many new polymers are continually being produced or improved. The basic chemistry principles involved in polymer synthesis have not changed much since the beginning of polymer production. Major changes in the last 70 years have occurred in the catalyst field and in process development. These improvements have a great impact on the economy. In the elastomer field, for example, improvements influenced the automobile industry and also related fields such as mechanical goods and wire and cable insulation. 

For the U.S., the new EPA rules will limit sulfur in gasoline to 30 ppm, phased between 2004 and 2006. The automobile industry has made a strong case for lower sulfur because of its effect on the catalytic converter. The converter has the same catalyst as the refinery reformer and it is poisoned just as easily by sulfur. 

Table 9.1 includes estimates of potential savings published in 1971. The variations in the ratio of savings to costs are in part due to differences in the extent to which severely corrosive environments are characteristic of the industry concerned. However, the differences also reflect the uneven level of corrosion awareness when the estimates were made, and as significant improvements in practices have occurred, the detailed figures do not entirely represent the current situation. For example, corrosion of cars is now a much smaller problem than it was in 1970. The automobile industry is also an... 

The solution was applied to the surface of cold-rolled steel, dip-galvanized steel sheet, and aluminum strip for degreasing and passivating in a single operation at 40°C for 90 s. The surfaces were then lacquered (85-100 pm thickness) and tested in a salt-spray test for 480 h without showing subsurface migration and blistering. The method is especially useful in the automobile industry for coated sheet [191]. 

Advances in the automobile industry are driving the research in the field of elastomers and the future research would be focused on the following aspects ... 

Rtihl [141] has reported on very large scale SS-GFAAS and XRF analysis of Cd in polymers for product control purposes in the automobile industry (approximately 20 000 parts per year) as a reaction on a Swedish law for environmental protection (upper limit of 75ppm). Another sample of direct SS-GFAAS in industry is the control of all raw materials, processing steps, and products for adhesive tapes for the content of Cu, Mn, Fe, Cd and Pb, which act as a rubber poison by catalytic effects [144]. 

Environmental Lead Contamination in December of 1965. More than half of its 32 participants represented the lead industry or federal health and research groups from Ohio and Michigan, strongholds of the automobile industry near Kehoe s laboratory. Attendees abandoned any pretense at neutrality and let their emotions and biases bubble over. Perhaps it s because the trigger, Dr. Patterson s article, is so obviously an emotional article, an observer commented. 

As an example, when automotive catalytic mufflers and converters were introduced many years ago, the automobile industry required the petrochemical industry to eliminate lead from gasoline since lead degraded and reduced the effectiveness of the catalyst and caused the destruction of the gasoline. One set of industrial compounds that can harm catalysts are halogens, a family of compounds that include chlorine, bromine, iodine, and fluorine. Bromine, while not prevalent in industry, is present in chemical plants. Freons are fluorine compounds. Silicone is another compound that is deleterious to catalysts. It is used as a slip agent, or a lubricant, in many industrial processes. Phosphorous, heavy metals (zinc, lead), sulfur compounds, and any particulate can result in shortening the life of the catalyst. It is necessary to estimate the volume or the amount of each of those contaminants, to assess the viability of catalytic technologies for the application. 

Detroit s electric cars have a shaky history since the market can change rapidly in the automobile industry, which is dependent on long lead times for new models. In 1975, when memories of the oil embargo were fresh, Detroit s cars were still growing in size, but it was a record sales year for the Volkswagen Beetle and sales of Toyotas and Hondas reached 100,000 that year. GM s profits dropped 35% and the company had to temporarily close 15 of its 22 assembly plants. 

In PVC, most benzimidazolone pigments are heat stable up to 220°C. They have excellent to outstanding lightfastness. Some representatives are very weather-fast in impact resistant PVC types and in rigid PVC and even withstand long-term weathering. Various benzimidazolone pigments are used, for instance by the automobile industry, in PVC plastisols to lend color to synthetic leather. 

In standard internal combustion engine drive trains, about 60% of the added value results from the vehicle industry. This share may be reduced to only 10% for fuel-cell drive trains if the outsourcing potential is fully exploited. This shift is because the components of the fuel-cell propulsion system are not suited to current production structures in the automobile industry. Therefore, it can initially be assumed that they will be manufactured by other sectors. However, if there is a breakthrough of fuel cells, it is possible that the automobile industry will start to manufacture many of the components that are assigned to other sectors in Figure 13.13. 

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