In the News

HOUSTON ," Wish your plant's equipment lasted longer? Better withstood heat? You soon might be granted these wishes and more when advanced polymer products begin making their way into pumps, valves, compressors and other equipment essential to the chemical processing industry.

Carbon Nanotechnologies Inc., Houston, and Paris-based Performance Plastics Products Inc. (3P) announced a joint agreement under which they plan to develop and commercialize new polymer products and equipment for use in industries needing higher temperature, chemical and corrosion resistance, increased pressure capabilities, and longer wear. The products will incorporate single-wall carbon nanotubes, also known as Buckytubes, which are 100 times stronger than steel yet weigh much less. This cylindrical polymer of pure carbon, said the companies, conducts electricity like a metal and conducts heat better than diamond.

Carbon Nanotechnologies hopes to be the first to commercialize the carbon nanotubes, which were discovered in the early 1990s, said David Karohl, the company's director of business development. "We believe we're in a very solid position in terms of scaling up production so that we'll be able to build a commercial plant in the very near future," he said. "It's a brand new material, a brand new polymer ," some development needs to be done to incorporate it into products."

Carbon nanotubes are the "strongest, stiffest, toughest materials in existence," contended Karohl. "They are electrically conductive ," highly conductive ," and they're thermally highly conductive. So when you blend them with other polymers, you can produce a composite of polymer blends that has significantly improved performance characteristics."

Buckytubes also boast a very high glass transition temperature, noted Karohl. "The higher the glass transition temperature of a material, the higher the temperature it can operate in," he explained. "That's very important whenever you have friction, like in reciprocating compressors or valves or things like that ," equipment in the chemical processing industry. The more heat that builds up, the more damage that could happen and the shorter the lifetime of the gasket or the seal or the valve. So if you could increase the time between maintenance, that would be very valuable."

3P, a manufacturer of engineered high-performance plastic products, will produce and commercialize new products incorporating Carbon Nanotechnologies' materials.

"We're in the business of making primarily fluoropolymer parts for pumps, valves, compressors, etc.," explained Bob Richter, director of innovation and development for 3P's U.S. operations in Houston. "We've been told that the carbon nanotubes have rather significant physical effects on components."

According to Richter, the companies are targeting three areas for development: increased conductivity, increased wear and decreased co-efficient of friction. However, he stressed that everything is "very experimental" at this point. "We're going to be doing a lot of testing," he said, "to be sure that if we change one thing, we don't change another."

With the European market beginning to require a "certain amount of conductivity" in products to discharge static buildup, the conductivity area seemed like a logical starting point for 3P. Venture partners hope to commercialize new high-conductivity products within the fourth quarter of this year, noted Richter.

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan commented at a May meeting of the Joint Economic Committee that he was "surprised at how little attention the natural gas problem has been getting." But a handful of industry groups has banded together to voice concerns and ensure the U.S. Congress gives the issue due notice.

The American Chemistry Council (ACC), the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), the American Iron and Steel Institute, the Council of Industrial Boiler Owners, The Fertilizer Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently issued a joint letter, spelling out the effects of the mandates in the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 to increase industry's use of natural gas. Greater reliance on natural gas for meeting the nation's energy needs has meant demand outstrips supply, driving up prices to alarming rates, the letter stated.

Tom Gilroy, an ACC spokesman, said the crisis became the association's number-one issue in February when natural gas prices closed one day at $19 per million Btu. Prices were in the $1.80-to-$2.50 per million Btu range in the 1990s. "We aren't competitive at that price," he said. "We've become the high-priced producer of chemicals because of what's happened to natural gas."

Whereas chemical companies in most other parts of the world run primarily on oil ," a global commodity with a price that is basically the same for all ," U.S. chemical companies operate mostly on natural gas, a national commodity that has been critically short in supply. Gilroy and others contend that U.S. companies' reliance on this higher-priced energy source has cost jobs and resulted in plant shutdowns and higher consumer costs.