Word: hydrocarbons
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Tests of the device, conducted at the bureau's Bartlesville, Okla., petroleum research center, will continue through July. Thus far, they have demonstrated that the reactor can cut automotive hydrocarbon exhaust to less than 70 parts per million, compared with an average of 900 p. p.m. in exhaust from cars unequipped with pollution-control units. Carbon monoxide has been reduced to less than .7% of the total exhaust from a car equipped with the reactor. Both figures are well within the 1970 standards proposed last week. Nonetheless, said one Du Pont official, the unit is far from commercially feasible...
Fortunately, research scientists on both sides of the Atlantic have just demonstrated two new substances that seem to do well at cleaning up oil-fouled waters. In the U.S., Guardian Chemical Co. of Long Island City, N.Y., has produced a hydrocarbon known as Poly-complex A. When the new substance is sprayed on a slick, it breaks down the oil into tiny particles, combines with them and forms a chemical complex that is readily degraded by bacteria, sunlight and air. "The bacteria have a hard time tackling a big oil slick," says Guardian President Dr. Alfred R. Globus...
...cars sold in the U.S. must be equipped with devices that will curb exhaust fumes, which pollute the air in almost every major U.S. city and are potentially a major killer. HEW hopes that its new regulations, which will cut out about half of the carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon pollutants, will clear the air somewhat by the end of the decade, as new cars replace older smoky models...
...long, unbranched chain of carbon atoms, rather like a natural fat. That, they figured, would be something bacteria could get their teeth into, destroying it quickly. They tacked a sulfonic-acid group (-SO-OH)-the chemical that is responsible for the cleansing action-onto each long-chain hydrocarbon molecule. This is no easy trick to perform in a practical industrial process, but after years of work Esso chemists finally developed a novel way of making the reluctant chemicals react by jolting them with gamma rays...
When they passed the proper hydrocarbons, sulphur dioxide and oxygen near a chunk of fiercely radioactive cobalt 60, the gamma rays from the cobalt knocked a hydrogen atom off the hydrocarbon molecules, making them highly reactive. After enough of these free radicals had been formed, the cobalt 60 could be removed, and the reaction proceeded without further stimulation. The result was SAS (sodium alkane sulfonate), a long-chain detergent that washes clothes and dishes every bit as well as the troublesome...