"ENTRY 1
The gas alarm was blowing. Men were running out of
Building 512. Was It more dangerous out here? He was
standing on the cinder driveway looking at the root.
Whoosh! One of the vent pipes on the roof erupted like
a Yellowstone geyser, blasting chemicals and sudsy water
into the air. Another rupture disk had broken, and the
reactor was spewing its contents into the hot Texas sky.
The vinyl chloride gas would disperse instantly, falling
below the explosive limit.
A seurity guard ran up. He told the guard to get the men
away from the building. A snow of poly vinyl chloride
(PVC) particles was already beginning to fall. The men
should move upwind so that they would get as little of
the white powder fallout as possible.
Most of the PVC particles were falling on the roofs of 512
and 510, the administration building. A gust of wind drove
a cloud of the white dust across the parking lot near 510.
The chemical blizzard would fill the crevices of the cars
with white resin powder.
Splat! Another reactor belched into the air. The building
foreman and the security guards had moved the men over
to 514. Everyone was out of 512.
There were probably no gas leaks inside 512. Otherwise a
concentration of vinyl chloride could build up that would
fall within the explosive limits, the mixture range of
air and vinyl chloride that could explode with devastating
force, blasting 512 apart and levelling the entire plant.
The gas alarm was still sounding. He wondered if the
voice-activated recorder in his shirt pocket was picking
it up. C had congratualted him on his promortion, but
she thought that his new assignment was risky and that
he should keep a journal. He took her advice. He was
transitioning from his position as PVC plant chief chemist
to head up a new lab at the Experimental Station where
she was employed.
ENTRY 2
He was still chief chemist for a few more days; and he
wondered if P, the PVC plant manager, would try to lay
some blame around. Recently reactors had been going out
of control more often, and management was not pleased.
When the gas alarm first sounded, all feeds to the reactors
in 512 had been shut off. He hoped there would be no
solid charges. It would take days to chop the PVC out
of a reactor that went solid. Only one man at a time
could work inside a reactor. It was a hard, dirty job;
but there were usually volunteers to do it. Were some of
the guys hooked on vinyl chloride?
What was going wrong? P had appointed a committee to
find out. The chief chemist was a member; but no one
individual could be blamed for the lack of progress in
solving the problem,
The gas alarm stopped blowing; and the men walked back
to 512 laughing and joking. The wind had almost cleared
the chemical aroma from the area. He could not smell
vinyl chloride: his abilty to detect the sweet odor
had been deadened a long time ago by constant exposure.
He could smell the peroxide initiator and the hexane used
as iniator solvent. He was grateful for the wind.
He thought P would blame the upset on a power failure.
That would satisfy any inquiring City officials or
newspaper reporters.
He walked into 512. The reactors were on the second floor;
each had a separate vent pipe leading to the roof. The PVC
plant buildings looked like junkyard birthday cakes.
Below the reactors, on the first floor, were the blowdown
tanks. When a reaction was completed, the contents of
the reactor were pumped down into its blowdown tank, where
the unreacted vinly chloride was separated from the rest
of the mixture and sent to storage tanks to be used again.
A year ago, he had suggested that the roof vents
be connected to a header pipe leading to an emergency
blowdown tank. When a reactor blew out, the chemicals
would not go into the air. Instead they could be collected
and maybe used again. This would also keep the PVC plant
from looking as if had been permently dusted with snow.
His suggestion had been indefinitely tabled, but it had
given him a dubious reputation of being interested in
environmental problems.
ENTRY 3
What had really caused the reactor blowouts? Was it an
impurity in the vinyl chloride that had arrived recently
from River City? Probably not. He had found no more than
the usual impurities in this last shipment. Something new
was unlikely because the gas chromatograph would have
shown a strange peak.
It could be the water. The PVC plant used City drinking
water in its processes. Until five years ago, the
drinking water could be used without further treatment.
Then trouble began with reactor blowouts, solid charges,
and fisheyes -- particles that would not take up dye and
plasticizer as easily as the rest of the polymer.
Extraction of the drinking water with organic solvents
followed by gas chromatography revealed the presence
of many strange organic chemicals. These chromatogram
peaks had grown larger over the years, and some new peaks
had appeared. More activated carbon columns were added,
but organic chemicals in the drinking water were still
getting through.
He wondered if new kinds of chlorine-resistant bacteria
were growing in the water, eating the organic chemicals.
These bacteria could interfere with the chemical reaction
as the vinyl chloride monomer molecules joined together
to form the long PVC polymer molecules.
What was to be done? The City cooperated by adding more
chlorine to the drinking water, but that was limited by
the taste of the water. It was not enough.
Was bacteria growing in the large drinking water storage
tanks at the PVC plant? P had not been interested in
experiments exploring this path; but the blowouts today
might change his mind."