SYNTHETIC RUBBER

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4326, 10 August 1937, Page 2

SYNTHETIC RUBBER

TRIUMPHS FOR CHEMISTRY BRITAIN'S NEW INDUSTRY Much interest has been aroused in commercial, scientific, and industrial circles by the recent announcement that synthetic rubber is to be manufactured on a considerable scale for the first time in Great Britain. The new material, whose chief com pounds are coal, limestone, and ’’ock salt, is to be called “ neoprene,” and its production is to he in the hands of Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd. An exhibition showing the various uses to which neoprene* can be put has coincided with the publication of the first book on the subject, ‘ Synthetic Rubber,’ by Dr W. J. S. Naunton, in which the head of the rubber laboratories of 1.C.1. Ltd. has described the history of man’s many attempts to find a substitute for what is to-day, probably, his most hard-worked commodity.

Perhaps a “ supplement ” rather than a “ substitute ” would be a more accurate way of describing the function of artificial rubber, for, as Dr Naunton said in an interview with a representative of the ‘ Observer,’ “ a most important thing to remember is that synthetic rubber is not intended to replace natural rubber at all. That is quite a wrong idea. It is making possible an extension of the whole vast rubber field. There are many purposes for which rubber is admirably suited, but on the other hand, there are an enormous number of uses to which it is being put to-day just because it comes nearest to fulfilling the specific requirements.

HAPHAZARD DEVELOPMENT. “ Take a motor car tyre now. There’s a case in point. Rubber practically always in contact with oil, which, as everyone knows, has an extremely detrimental effect on it. But there you are. A new demand arose which could be met most nearly among the materials available by rubber. It is a good example of the entirely fortuitous way in which rubber has come to he used to-day in so many things—because there was nothing better at the moment of demand.

“ The trouble has been,” continued Dr Naunton, “ that in the past there has been no chance of individual development at all. Chemical firms would not spend the money. Between 80 to a 100,000 tons of natural rubber came into this country every year, yet if we could only develop a market of a thousand tons of the synthetic stuff we should have a commercial field which would immediately give us opportunities for studying those special cases of application which are absolutely essentia] to the proper development of the artificial rubber industry. That has been our trouble—-lac'k of practical experience. That, and the lack of funds—inevitable, of course, until you get a turnover on your products."

SUPPLIES IN WARTIME. 11 Then there is another way of looking at the question. Supposing we were at war. All our rubber is imported from the Ear East. Would it be a good thing to have to rely on the safety of that long sea passage for our supplies? Remember, it takes seven years to grow a crop—seven years to increase your supply to meet the demands of war. Why, the war would bo over long before anything could be done about it! With synthetic rubber an extra supply could be got as fast as the engineers could put up the plant for making it.” “Is synthetic chemistry going to help us like this in other ways in the immediate future, do you think?”

“ Well, 1 think there’s a general tendency to replace natural products by artificial ones, and the whole field is bound to enlarge. There is a lot in what Kettering, the director of research to General Motors, said in an address the other day, when ho asked his audience whether it was conceivable that the rubber tree was thinking of the motor tyre when it was secreting its latex or "the silkworm of the lady’s stockings as it spun its thread? We’ve always taken what we’ve found to hand and tried to make it do. But it’s a fundamental mistake. It’s like fitting square pegs into round holes. The ideal thing is to decide first of all what it is you really need, and then to discover a product which will exactly fulfil those demands.”