This article focuses on the Oil Age, which began 150 years ago in Pennsylvania and forecasts suggest that it has only few decades left for extinction. In today’s world, much of the fire comes from petroleum, which was first extracted from the ground for commercial purposes 150 years ago. Whale oil was prized for best light and low soot, but production peaked in the 1840s. This was the decade when Herman Melville sailed on a whaling ship, which inspired Moby Dick . The modern Oil Age can be traced to a well near Oil Creek in the northwestern Pennsylvania community of Titusville, where an enterprise managed by Edwin Drake discovered petroleum on August 27, 1859. It was not the first strike of oil in history, but it was the first that intended to exploit oil commercially as fuel. The petrochemical industry that uses mostly oil and natural gas for feedstock started at the beginning of the 20th century in the form of fertilizers and synthetic plastics and polymers. Today our vehicles have better tires that have resulted from using synthetic polymers rather than natural rubber from trees.

This article analyses strategies that are improving manufacturing in the aluminum and automotive industries. There are also high-performance plastics that can be injection molded in a single piece to replace assemblies of several metal parts. Automated controls enhance the precision of what were once manual operations and make them safer. Replacing assembled metal parts with injection-molded plastic components often reduces the number of manufacturing steps and their related costs, as well as the weight of the finished product. Advances in instrumentation and control technologies are enabling manufacturers to automate more and more operations, with increases in efficiency and productivity beyond human limits. Ormet Aluminum Mill Products Corp. in Wheeling, WV, recently upgraded the strip casting furnace operations at its coated aluminum and foil aluminum facility in Jackson, MI, this way.

This article describes features of an automated, closed sampling system that cuts waste and improves safety at a plastics factory. In order to monitor product composition and quality, tests must be performed on material entering and leaving the fluid-bed vessels. This means that samples must be drawn at eight locations, two in each processing stream. Morris, Illinois, complex of Equistar Chemicals LP, considered alternatives that could operate without an employee on the spot. Although sampling normally would be initiated by the computers that run the production process, a pushbutton override was installed at each location to allow on-demand sampling, which is helpful in problem-solving or gauging the progress of product changeover. Samples are collected and delivered by hand to the laboratory. At one time, hydrocarbons, or volatile organic compounds, which are by-products of the manufacturing process, would be present when samples were collected. That potential problem is avoided because the Bristol sampler body provides a built-in purging port intended for introducing an inert gas or fluid to flush clinging materials out of the spool. Automating has given the company more confidence that its samples and their data are representative. Because the samplers are completely enclosed, the finer particles remain as part of the sample.

Engineers from all disciplines are using computerized libraries to get quick answers to critical questions. General Electric Appliances in Louisville, KY, is helping its engineers gain more plastics knowhow, has put in place an information software program. The software is Know-How from C-Mold, which is also based in Louisville. Engineers can search for pertinent information about a plastics design problem they may be working on and get answers at their desktop. The Invention Machine product, called Knowledgist, reads and understands digital documents stored in its base. The software uses what the company calls semantic processing technology that scans and analyzes a document. Engineers at GE Appliances use a Web-based computerized library to find answers to questions about plastics molding design and manufacture. The software exists on the Internet and is accessible via a Web browser.

Salyp N.V., an automotive recycling company in Eiper, Belgium, has developed a mechanical sorting system whose purpose is to recover the mixed thermoplastic portion of automotive shredder residue. Salyp is marketing franchises of its recycling technology to automotive shredders worldwide. The company also envisions an End-of-Life Vehicle (ELV) Foundation, in which auto shredder customers and other interested groups, including government agencies, will help to establish standards for thermoplastics that are reclaimed from auto-shredder residue. Yet the company must overcome a tough hurdle if it’s going to sell its idea to the estimated 200 auto shredders that do business in the United States. A specific section within the law prohibits the manufacture, processing, use or reuse, or distribution in commerce of printed circuit boards (PCB). Salyp plans to combine its thermoplastic sorting system with a system developed by Argonne Lab for the recycling of polyurethane foam. Foam is the third material stream, after metal oxides and thermoplastics, in the initial sorting of shredder waste.

A new continuous recycling system has been developed at Argonne National Laboratory of Argonne, IL, which can separate auto shredder residue into distinct material streams that can eventually be reprocessed into useful products. The lab signed its first license agreement with N.V. Salyp, a recycler in Eiper, Belgium. The company plans to incorporate the system into a demonstration facility for recycling vehicles and will sublicense the Argonne technology to automobile shredders worldwide. Argonne's technology separates previously ‘unrecoverable’ residue—a mass of plastic, rubber, glass, fibers, and dirt—into useful product streams of polyurethane foam, thermoplastics, and inorganic fines. In the wash section of Argonne's foam cleaning operation, a conveyor moves the foam forward, then compresses and releases it to remove entrained oils and dirt. The company plans to incorporate Argonne's separation and foam cleaning technology into the demonstration plant, but is opting for a mechanical separation technology to separate mixed thermoplastics. Salyp plans to license a technology for mechanical separation of mixed plastics. The demonstration plant will also include a bumper shredding facility.

Sensors & Software Inc. (S&S) is adapting its original line of ground penetrating radars (GPR), which is meant for deep soundings and reconnaissance in rough terrain as well as shallow-depth, high-resolution imaging systems for utilities, roads, and bridges. S&S wanted a molded plastic housing, preferably a high-density polyethylene for high durability. Plastics permit molding complex parts in quantities small or large, as needed. Plastics also allow for curved, ergonomic, and visually appealing shapes nearly impossible to match in machined metal. The big learning experience for S&S was in replacing the machined steel housings for the electronic components, sort of a housing within a housing. Ove Industrial Design simplified the packaging of a ground penetrating radar system, to create a lower-priced version of the product for its manufacturer. Ove used mechanical computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing packages called PowerSHAPE and DUCTS from Delcam International Inc. of Windsor, Ontario, which presented S&S with a new experience.

This article reviews the importance of conductive polymer. The big chemical company is marketing the polythiophene under the trade name Baytron. The material could also be used to make plastics paintable by adding the conductive agent first, or in the electrodes of small, high-performance tantalum capacitors found in telecommunications, computer, and automotive products. Probably the most significant commercialization of conductive polymers was for flexible, long-lived batteries that were produced in quantity by Bridgestone Corp. and Seiko Co. in Japan and by BASF/Varta in Germany. Conductive polymers are long, carbon-based chains composed of simple repeating units called monomers. The list of potential applications for conductive polymers remains a long one, and includes antiradiation coatings, batteries, catalysts, deicer panels, electrochromic windows, electromechanical actuators, embedded-array antennas, fuel cells, lithographic resists, nonlinear optics, radar dishes, and wave guides. However, how big an impact the materials will make in these markets remains unclear.