SYNTHETIC EVERYTHING

Evening Star, Issue 19519, 29 March 1927, Page 8

SYNTHETIC EVERYTHING

SOME MODERN DISCOVERIES

The newspapers mid the conversation of our friends arc fail of.takes about “synthetic” this or that, until it almost begins to look as if everything will be synthetic pretty soon. What is synthesis? What has it accomplished? And what may wo expect from it in the luiurc? Wo have synthetic alcohol, synthetic camphor, synthetic indigo, leather, perfumes, flavorings, and many other products, and are expecting more, some. ot them almost in sight now. A writer in the 1 Engineering and Mining Journal ’ (New York) essays to tell ns briefly about them.

Synthesis, ho explains, is the opposite of analysis; the hitter moans disintegrating, as breaking up a chemical compound into its constituent elements; the former means integrating, as forming a chemical compound by the joining together ot distinct elements. He proceeds;—

“Analysis was the first triumph of chemistry, and was ot vast industrial importance; synthesis is the later achievement, and of even more marvellous, almost miraculous, results. In the process of synthesis it has been found that certain media may bo useful or even nefcessary to produce a desired combination of elements, even though these persuasive elements or substances take no part in the chemical process involved, and remain at the end as they were in the beginning. These substances are called catalyzers; the function is called catalysis. Synthesis, with or without the intermediary service of catalyzers, is of present and future industrial and every-day significance—and has passed into everyday speech—as, for example, synthetic alcohol. “The achievements of the chemist in this respect surpass all that the lay imagination could have conceived, b or example, camphor, a vegetal gum, and, by reason of climate, practically a Japanese monopoly, has been made synthetically on so largo a scale as to displace largely, in the United States, the natural substance. indigo, another vegetal product, has largely been supplanted in the world’s markets by artificial indigo, made from coal tar. The leather industry, as statistics and graphs show, suffers apparently permanent depression, while most other industries are very nourishing. What is the reason? Tim manufacture of artificial leather from cellulose—not the stained pressed paper substitute that we knew in the old days in shoddy articles, but a leather about as good as the real hide—practically a real leather. Last year automobile upholstering used over twice as much artificial leather as real leather. Synthetic perfumes, which have tlm true odor of certain flowers, and animal perfumes, are manufactured in some cases more cheaply than the natural product. Synthetic flavorings have taken over a largo part of the market of the natural vegetal product; well-known examples arc vanilla and peppermint. “ In the mineral world petroleum is perhaps the only natural product which may have a synthetic rival. The production of oils from oil shales and from bituminous coal may or may not ba synthetic in the exact sense—one process, that devised by Berghuis, however, is truly synthetic, combining free hydrogen with the coal under pressure, to make new hydrocarbon compounds. In the field of non-metallic mining, where minerals which are _ cnemical combinations are used in their natural state for their physical values, artificial and in part synthetic, substitutes, of course, do and will exist. In the metallic field there will be great competition from substitutes, but the field of reproduction by chemical methods is probably safe. Synthesis hero is, of course, out of the question, since the metals are elements, and the only dream of the chemists in this connection lias been the change of one element into another, the transmutation of a baser metal Into a more valuable

one. Tliis, following the discovery that one element may really change to another, as uranium does into radium, and the latter into helium and lead, is not an impossible hope; but it has not yet been done, despite many manifestoes to the contrary, and as an industrial probability it scorns remote.” The next twenty-five years will sec astonishing developments in synthetic products, according to Professor Roger Adams, of the University of Illinois, in 1 Industrial and Engineering Chemistry,’ official publication of the American Chemical Society. Wood alcohol from water gas, or from car)ion nionoxid and hydrogen, will supplant the product distilled from wood, eliminating a million dollar industry, Professor Adams assorts. The new wood alcohol, or methvl alcohol, may oven become oho of onr future fuels. The fact that it takes two full-grown rubber trees two years to produce enough rubber for a Ford tyre shows the importance of developing synthetic rubber, says Professor Adams. He goes on

“ Rubber lias been made synthetically, and the types of raw material necessary are well known. Rut the serious problem is to find a source of this raw material cheap enough to make possible competition of synthetic rubber with the mainrnl.

“ Petroleum offers a possibility. When the high-boiling petroleum is cracked, in order to obtain low-boiling fractions which can bo used ns gasoline m internal-combustion engines, there 'are contained in these low fractions butadiene and its derivatives, the type of compounds that have been shown to bo convertible into synthetic rubber. “It remains for the chemist to find bow the yield of these butadienes may bo increased, and how they may be economically removed from the other closely related products which accompany them. When this difficult problem is solved synthetic rubber will not bn far off. The field of alloys is another which offers the chemist an attractive opportunity to help in rendering his nation essentially independent of all others in metal resources. “ Platinum, which can well lie called the king of all metals, because of its many desirable qualities, is scarce and found only in a very few districts in the world. Not many years ago platinum was used extensively for tbo connecting wires through the the end of electric light bulbs, particularly because its coefficient of expansion was the same as that of glass.

“ Rut the chemist discovered that an alloy of iron and 46 per cent, of nickel, platinite, would give the same coefficient of extension, and thus platinum no longer has to be used for this purpose.

“ bn spark plugs platinum has been replaced by an alloy of tungsten and molybdenum, and in linings for acid pumps and other such mechanical parts, which must resist corrosion, platinum can bo replaced by illium, an alloy ol nickel, chromium, and copper, together with small amounts of other metals. “ All of the six most common metals, with the exception of tin, are found in the United States. One of the largest uses of fin is the making of tin-plate, particularly in tin cans, and consists in coating iron with a verythin layer of tin.

“In the tinning of cans, however, it is practically impossible to get a perfect coating. Since the presence ot a pinholo will usually cause chemical action between the contents of tho can and tho iron, thus producing a discoloration of the foods, a coating of lacquer must be added. “ But if the lacquer lining is necessary to make it satisfactory for tho contents, why should it not be possible to develop a lacquer coating tor tho iron which would bo suitable, and thus do away with tho fin? This is a timely problem which has not yet been solved, but is being studied, and when solved will make unnecessary a largo proportion of the tin now imported. “Synthetic medicines give the chemist a chance to improve on natural products. The success he has already obtained in this field"can leave no dol».t about o. most brilliant future.

“ It has been only during the past fifty to sixty years that chemists have learned the art of isolating, in a pure state from the natural source, such important substances as cocaine, morphine, and quinine. “ But tho chemist has gone still farther, Not content merely with isolation, he has studied them chemically, and from the knowledge thus obtained he has attempted to synthesise them. “His chemical study of cocaine, a drug which since its properties were discovered has been indispensable to the doctor as a local anaesthetic, led to tho conclusion that only a, particular part

of tlie complex molecule was really essential to obtain amesthesia. . “As a consequence ho synthesised simple compounds containing groupings of atoms similar to those found to be. essential to the medicinal eflect of the natural products. His efforts met with success, and the well-known substance novocaino has replaced a largo proportion of the cocaine formerly used. Not only is novocaino cheaper, but it is loss toxic, and has other qualities .of value that cocaine does not possess. “ Oil of wintergreen, or methyl salicylate and salicylic acid, both naturally occurring compounds, the medicinal value of which as anti-rheumatics and analgesics was recognised long ago, can now lie prepared synthetically for an extremely low price, to the exclusion of the natural product. “ Derivatives of these substances have come into even greater use. Aspirin, or acetyl salicylic acid,' for example, is now almost a household word in all lands.”