Word: rubbers
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...thing the synthetics have in common : none is really rubber. Natural rubber has never been duplicated in the laboratory, probably never will be. Chemists prefer to call the synthetic rubbers "elastomers," a new class of materials, and an industry as big and diverse as plastics and synthetic textiles. Special properties can be built to order in elastomers because their molecules are tailor-made. They are put together in different designs by combining various small unit groups of atoms into polymers (from the Greek: "many parts"). The chief units: butadiene, acetylene, ethylene, styrene...
Closely related to it is isoprene (also called methyl butadiene). Although isoprene is the basic unit in natural rubber, it is useless by itself. But when isobutylene and isoprene are polymerized together the result is Standard Oil's butyl, tough, very elastic, now favored for inner tubes. It is to be made at a rate of 100,000 tons a year...
When butadiene is polymerized with styrene the result is Buna-S, developed in Germany but since improved by Standard Oil (of N.J.). Styrene itself has no relation whatever to natural rubber. It is made from benzene, principally by the Dow and Monsanto companies, and gives an excellent crystal-clear plastic when polymerized by itself. Combined with butadiene in Buna-S, the product is high in tensile strength and resistant to abrasion. In some tests it has proved distinctly superior to natural rubber in wearing qualities. (Some Buna-S truck tires have lasted over 50,000 miles.) The Baruch plan calls...
...other elastomers are made from butadiene: Perbunan, Chemigum, Hycar and Ameripol. Perbunan is made with acrylonitrile but the formulas of the others have not been published. All are highly resistant to oil and are used for oil hose, gasoline hose and gaskets. Hycar makes an excellent ebonite, or hard rubber, when vulcanized. Ameripol is featured for tires by Goodrich. None of these is included in the Baruch program; they are in production without emergency Government financing...
Germany invented ersatz during World War I, staked her economic survival in World War II on a big program of synthetic substitutes for gasoline, rubber, leather, textiles and even foods. In spite of this advance preparation there is now a serious ersatz shortage in Germany. Substitutes for substitutes are the topic of most of the German scientific news reaching the American Chemical Society, mostly from refugees in England...