MAKING RUBBER
l(> PRODUCT OF LABORATORIES
many Patents.
ENTERPRISES IN UNITED STATES.
Thiokol . . . neoprene . . . buna . . . vinglite . . . koroseal . . . these could be words dropped from the pages of Arabian Nights writes W. Clifford Harvey in the “Christian Science Monitor.” They can’t be found in the dictionary. But they represent products with which American industry hopes to keep American motor cars rolling. The names stand for patented synthetic rubbers already on American markets in a wide assortment of practical products. They will pace the Nation’s recently announced 400,000,000 dollars synthetic rubber expansion programme seeking to make America eventually self-sufficient in a raw material which until last month it imported almost wholly from the Netherlands East Indies and Malaya. It will .take some time—one year, maybe two —to begin turning out enough synthetic rubber even to make a dent in the national demands. Normal peacetime requirements call for 600,000 tons of rubber. And the best the synthetic producers will be able to produce by the end of 1942 will be 70,000 tons. Meanwhile, the United States has a stockpile of approximately 510,000 tons of rubber, 1 which is believed sufficient to supply military needs ifntil synthetic and other sources can come into production. During the last twenty years military experts, congressmen ’ and industrialists such as Harvey Firestone, have insisted that America should grow its own rubber. Makers of synthetic materials, on the other hand, urged that rubber substitutes being produced chemically in their laboratories could be made to satisfy the United States s demands in time of national emergency- T , . The emergency has come. In place of an assumed security, motorists whose cars may have been necessary to their livelihood have found themselves facing a temporary ban and eventual rationing on the sale of tires. While it has been known that a principal military deficiency of the United States was rubber, and far-flung efforts have been launched to remedy this deficiency, the Americas have waited for the war emergency to stimulate action. Although synthetic production plus the small rubber tonnage obtained from rubber trees in South America, the guayule plants of California and other isolated experiments will help to keep the military machine cushioned in rubber, the pinch will be intense for civilians if the East Indies shipping lanes are not opened by 1943. Hence, motorists may have to turn to reclaimed rubber. There is said to be a stockpile of 500,000 tons of used rubber available and an equal amount could probably be reclaimed in 1943. But reclaimed rubber is not safe at high, motor speeds and it wears out rapidly. The second World War, it appears, may cause synthetic rubber manufacture to bound into the category of a 1,000,000,000 dollars industry. Whether the United States will go permanently into the production of its own raw rubber will depend largely upon how cheaply it can produce synthetic materials like du Font’s neoprene,” which now costs more than crude’ rubber but is applicable for widely varied products. “Thiokol” is made partly from sulphur and natural gas by the Thiokol Company.", Union Carbide’s “vinglite and Goodrich’s “koroseal” are produced from acetylene and can replace mbbei* in only limited fields, but in these fields the synthetic materials are better than rubber. “Buna” is produced fiom petroleum and forms the basis of Germany’s independence of outside rubber supplies. Only last June the Goodrich Company started work on a 325,000-dollar synthetic rubber plant at Niagara Falls and the United States Rubber Company started one of four new plants at Naugatuck. Conn. The guayule shrub, found wild in northern Mexico and Texas, produced 1,247,000 pounds of rubber in 1941 under domestic cultivation in California, where a 2,000,000-dollar plant has been built by the American Rubber Products Company. The Federal Government has been experimenting eight years with’ this shrub. Jesse Jones, Secretary of Commerce, points out that not until some time next year can synthetic production be made td reach 100,000 tons. Making synthetic rubbers useful to industry requires not only plants for producing rubber but plants for making the auxiliary chemicals such as chlorine gas (already on the shortage list) and plants for processing chemicals. In other words the facilities for producing 400,000 tons of synthetic rubbers cannot be in place before the middle of 1943.
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 May 1942, Page 4
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707MAKING RUBBER Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 May 1942, Page 4
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