EMPLOYMENT:

Layoffs on the Coast By almost anyone's standards, 40-year-old Sam Cohz is a success. The carpet and upholstery cleaning busi­ness that he owns in Northridge, Calif., provides him with a comforta­ble income. But Mr. Cohz isn't en­tirely satisfied. For by training and inclination he is a physical chemist who has gained the attention and re­spect of fellow mass spectroscopists during the past 15 years. Progress in his chosen field came to an abrupt halt last June when he lost his job at North American Rockwell's Rocket-dyne division's complex in neighbor­ing Canoga Park.

Many are finding themselves in Mr. Cohz's predicament, though not all have been as fortunate in so nimbly landing on their feet financially. In­creasing numbers of scientists and technologists, whose jobs have been funded mainly by U.S. government money, are being let go.

Particularly hard hit have been those working for the aerospace com­panies and other organizations on the West Coast that look to Washington for a sizable portion of their business. Rocketdyne, for instance, expects to lay off 13,000 employees before year's end. That cut will come on top of 17,000 that were let go last year. The company's science center at Thousand Oaks, Calif., will pare 40 from its technical force of 200.

Seattle-based Boeing Corp.'s work force has been declining steadily dur­ing the past 18 months. The aircraft builder dropped 25,000 from its pay­roll nationwide last year, plans to whittle off a further 18,000 before this year is through. Aerojet General Corp. now has only some 5000 people at its Sacramento, Calif., facility in contrast to nearly 20,000 who were there in 1963.

Aerospace companies aren't alone in feeling the pinch of federal belt-tight­ening. For instance, Lawrence Radi­ation Laboratory at Livermore, Calif., which the University of California manages for the Atomic Energy Com­mission, is giving dismissal notices to 100 scientists and engineers and to more than 200 technicians. "The funds just aren't there," says LRL.

As a result of these and similar moves elsewhere, the ranks of unem­ployed chemists are swelling. Statis­tics from Los Angeles, Orange, and San Diego counties alone show that chemists who collected unemployment insurance checks from the California State Department of Labor in Decem­ber of last year numbered 203, notes Marcel G. Eye, chairman of the em­ployment committee of ACS's South­ern California Section. A year earlier,

the number was only 45 making claims. To help bring chemists and poten­

tial employers together, Mr. Eye, who works with the Los Angeles County Air Pollution Control District, and his fellow ACS members formed an un­employed chemists club last month. "In addition to contacting companies in the area by phone to plumb their personnel requirements, we are seek­ing advice about the retraining of chemists to help them expand their job horizons," he says.

Alan C. Nixon, employment chair­man with the California Section of ACS headquartered in Berkeley, be­lieves, too, that retraining is at least one promising answer to the nagging job problem.

"It's all very depressing," sums up Dr. Marjorie Rommel, who leaves her job at Rocketdyne soon. Despite the fact that she has a Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry from the University of Ari­zona, she strongly suspects that she may have to resort to playing the or­gan for a living, at least for a short time to come.

BUTADIENE:

Explosion Explained Union Carbide has pinpointed the cause of the explosion in a butadiene unit at its Texas City, Tex., plant on Oct. 23, 1963. Extraordinarily high concentrations of vinyl acetylene in the reboiler section of the butadiene re­fining column resulted in exothermic polymerization of the vinyl acetylene and the blast, Warren Anderson, group vice president for chemicals and plastics, said.

Mr. Anderson and R. P. Barry, man-

THE CHEMICAL WORLD THIS WEEK

ager of the Texas City plant, disclosed that the company's 1.2 billion pound-a-year ethylene unit, damaged also by fire following the explosion, now is operating at about 40% of rated ca­pacity. During the restarting of the ethylene unit in February, a compres­sor blew out. If the schedule for replacement of components of the compressor holds, and no other diffi­culties occur, the ethylene unit should reach full capacity by the end of April.

A new butadiene unit now is scheduled to start up in October or November. Cost of repairs and re­placements totals between $8 and $9 million, Mr. Barry said. This cost does not include lost production.

With rebuilding of the unit well un­der way, company engineers and safety experts have formulated changes in operating procedures to prevent other such explosions, Mr. Anderson explained. These basically aim to prevent buildup of vinyl acety­lene to high concentrations. Carbide engineers and scientists were familiar with properties of vinyl acetylene con­centrations normally met in butadiene purification, but were unfamiliar with the concentrations which built up in the column.

The vinyl acetylene buildup came from two factors. The refining column was being operated on "total reflux" (recirculation of its contents) while repairs were being made to other parts of the unit. A faulty valve on top of the column, however, allowed some butadiene to escape slowly, thus in­creasing the vinyl acetylene concen­tration in the reboiler. The leaking valve also allowed the liquid level in

What was left after the blast at Texas City Extraordinarily high concentrations of vinyl acetylene

6 C&EN MARCH 30, 1970