Cotton Mills To Chemical Plants: A Chapter in The Recent Industrial History of Stalybridge

COTTON MILLS TO CHEMICAL PLANTS
A chapter in the recent industrial history of Stalybridge Tom Craig and John Bowes
View over Stalybridge circa 1965, courtesy of Tameside Image Archive
Cotton Mills to Chemical Plants

A chapter in the recent industrial history of Stalybridge
Stalybridge: municipal borough and town in Cheshire, near Manchester. Cotton spinning, weaving, and ironworks. Population 24,823. (Pears Cyclopaedia 1948)
Cotton Mills to Chemical Plants: a chapter in the recent industrial history of Stalybridge
The Stalybridge Site, 1995
Preface
This is a history of the chemicals-based industry that the Sterling Group of companies developed in the former cotton spinning towns of Stalybridge and Dukineld, Cheshire. In the late 1940s the cotton industry that had dominated the area was dying, and many mills in Stalybridge and Dukineld lay empty. In 1948 Rudy Sternberg, a London-based trader, began a business venture that led to him buying ve of these mills and two large former engineering sites for conversion to chemical plants. His rst purchase was Albion Mill, Stalybridge where he installed a chemical plant for making resins from phenol and formaldehyde (phenolic resins). The business was called Sterling Moulding Materials Ltd. Sternbergs operations grew and diversied for the next thirty years. They made phenolic and urea-formaldehyde resins, polystyrene, coated papers and uorescent pigments. By 1979 they employed about 1000 people and contributed substantially to the local economy. The chemical plants that made polystyrene became the biggest business under the Sterling banner. These plants were in and around Castle Mill, Stalybridge. In the late 1970s polystyrene production was about 60,000 tonnes per year. Research and development work carried out in Stalybridge created advances in chemical technology that were adopted worldwide in processes for manufacturing plastics materials. Sternberg received a knighthood and later a peerage for his services to industry and exports. He died in 1978. In compiling this document we have drawn on our own years of experience within Sterling and on information kindly provided by the following former Sterling staff members: Barry Hale, Don Sellars, Roger Quick, Catriona Grigg, John Beswick, Zigmund Kromolicki, Alan Linton, Jim Butterworth, Ken Owen, Keith Greenwood and Elaine Dodge. We are grateful to Andrew Ritchie, managing director of Total Petrochemicals UK Ltd without whose support this history would have remained as unpublished fragments. In a narrative such as this some technical content is unavoidable and we have tried to minimise it. Notes and references are set out at the end of the text.
The Authors
Dr Tom Craig was a senior member of the technical staff in the polystyrene division of Sterling Moulding Materials Ltd and its successor companies from 1970 till 1982. John Bowes is a specialist in process control technology. He led the design and implementation of chemical process control systems in the Stalybridge polystyrene operations from 1971 till 1997.
Tom Craig and John Bowes 2013
Cover Pictures Background: Structure of impact polystyrene magnied 7000 times Centre: Looking over to Castle Mill from the Globe Site
Contents
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................1 Rudy Sternberg a biography .................................................................................................................................................2 Sternberg at Stalybridge: the beginning of manufacture (Albion Mill, 1948) ..............................................................4 Phenolic and UF resin manufacture ..........................................................................................................................................5 Safety and environmental aspects of phenolic resin manufacture at Albion Mill ...................................................................6 Further developments at Albion Mill Sterling Coated Materials Ltd..........................................................................7 Expansion of operations to Tower Mill and Etherow Works ............................................................................................7 Sterling Colour Company Ltd (Albion Mill) ..........................................................................................................................8 Pigment manufacture .................................................................................................................................................................8 The expansion to Queen Mill (Foundry Street, Dukineld)..............................................................................................8 The businesses after Sternbergs death the 1979 sale to RTZ Chemicals Ltd ............................................................9 The Sterling polystyrene operations in Stalybridge .......................................................................................................10 Polystyrene manufacture ..........................................................................................................................................................12 The suspension (or bead) process .............................................................................................................................................13 The press process .......................................................................................................................................................................14 The semi-continuous polystyrene process in Castle Mill ................................................................................................21 The U-Tube process ...................................................................................................................................................................22 The advent of large-scale continuous polystyrene manufacture the horizontal reactor plant .......................24 The polystyrene business after Sternbergs death in 1978 ..............................................................................................30 Technology developments at Stalybridge ...........................................................................................................................31 Safety and environmental aspects of the Sterling polystyrene operations ................................................................32 Summary .....................................................................................................................................................................................34 Postscript: The Globe Site history ........................................................................................................................................35 Notes and references ................................................................................................................................................................37 Publications and patents .........................................................................................................................................................40
Cotton Mills to Chemical Plants

A chapter in the recent industrial history of Stalybridge
Stalybridge: municipal borough and town in Cheshire, near Manchester. Cotton spinning, weaving, and ironworks. Population 24,823. (Pears Cyclopaedia 1948)
Introduction
At the end of the Second World War (1939-45) the traditional cotton spinning and weaving industry that had underpinned the economy in the towns around Manchester was in terminal decline. In Stalybridge and Dukineld most cotton spinning mills had closed. But, due to the vision of a man who had come to England in 1937 as a refugee, some of the silent mills in these two towns were destined to become chemical plants, and to contribute substantially to the local economy. The man responsible for this industrial transition was Rudy Sternberg, later to become Sir Rudy, and ultimately to be ennobled as a peer of the realm Lord Plurenden. The conversion of cotton mills to chemical plants began in 1948, and expanded over the following thirty years.
Introduction
Sternberg developed his chemical operations in ve cotton mills (Albion Mill, Castle Mill, Tower Mill, Whitelands Mill, and Queen Mill) and on two former engineering sites (John Summers Globe Ironworks and Broadbents Phoenix Works, both adjacent to Castle Mill). This memoir describes the postwar origins and subsequent growth of the operations that Sternberg started. In particular it records the evolution of the Stalybridge polystyrene manufacturing operation, and the advances in chemical technology associated with it. Sternbergs manufacturing interests bore the name Sterling. Their activity peaked in the mid-1970s, by which time they employed about 1000 people, and thus contributed signicantly to
the local economy. The main Sterling operations produced plastics moulding materials, in the form of pellets and powders, from chemical feedstocks. These materials were sold to other industries for conversion to nished products. The highest-volume materials were solid polystyrene pellets (made from styrene monomer), followed by Bakelite-type moulding materials (called phenolic resins because they are made by reacting phenol with formaldehyde). Polystyrene became the biggest business in the Sterling group. By 1977 it was producing about 60,000 tonnes per year and generating sales revenue of about 12 million (about 60 million in present terms). Until recently the major legacy of Sternbergs initiatives was the Total Petrochemicals Ltd plant,
producing about 80,000 tonnes per year of polystyrene on the former Globe Ironworks site on Bayley Street, Stalybridge. Sadly at the time of writing this plant is scheduled for closure in April 2013.
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Rudy Sternberg a biography

Rudy Sternberg (Fig. 1) was born in Austria in 1917, and was educated in Germany. His father was a miller and corn merchant. In 1937 Rudy came to England to avoid the antiSemitic political and social environments in Germany and Austria that foreshadowed the Second World War, and would later develop into mass persecution. He settled in London, and began to study chemical engineering at London University. In 1939, at the outbreak of the Second World War, he joined the British Army. In 1943 he was demobilised on health grounds.1 During the war years clothing materials were in short supply, and like many basic goods, were rationed. After having to leave the army, Sternberg set up a recycling business in London that recovered buttons from discarded clothes, and sold them for re-use within the garment industry. In 1945, aged 28, he was granted British citizenship. In the immediate post-war years there were shortages of many basic manufacturing materials throughout Europe.
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The shortages varied in type and severity from country to country. Sternberg began to trade goods with Eastern bloc countries in Europe that had come under Communist control, using trading strategies that exploited the geographic pattern of availabilities and shortages of materials across Europe that had resulted from the war. He saw that these geographic supply and demand distortions were an opportunity to make money by trading. For example, in the UK there was a post-war shortage of phosphate rock, a material that was critical for making agricultural fertilisers to expand food production. He set up a company (The Propane Co. Ltd) to import phosphate rock from East Germany where it was mined. The counter-trade was based on the fact that the Eastern bloc countries needed plastics moulding materials, particularly Bakelite types, to help rebuild their war-damaged manufacturing industries. These plastics materials were more readily available in the UK, since its chemical industries had survived the war relatively
undamaged. The basic chemicals (such as phenol) for making the moulding materials came from the UK coalelds via coal-tar by-products; these by-products came from steel industry cokeovens and the coal gas industry. (Towns gas for heating and lighting was made throughout the UK by coal carbonisation in local gasworks; the coal tar was condensed from the crude gas as part of the gas purication process. The tar was then distilled to yield a valuable range of chemicals). Accordingly Sternberg set up another business (Dominion Exports Ltd) to export plastics moulding materials that he bought from manufacturers in the UK. To protect domestic businesses and control currency movements the Labour government that came to power in 1945 controlled all UK export and import business by a licensing process. Licences were granted by the Board of Trade, which was a government department. Obtaining licences for his businesses may have been helped by Sternbergs friendship
Fig. 1 Rudy Sternberg
with the Labour MP and economist Harold Wilson, who was President of the Board of Trade from 1947 until 1951. Wilson later served two terms as prime minister, rst from 19641970, and again from 19741976. Sternberg partly funded Wilsons private ofce during his non-government period, via a trust that he and other businessmen had set up for the purpose. In 1970, during Wilsons rst government, Sternberg was knighted for services to exports. In 1975, during the second
Wilson government, he was given a peerage and became Lord Plurenden he lived at Plurenden Manor in Kent. Sternbergs import-export trade expanded through the Cold War years, and he developed a network of inuential high-level contacts in the Iron Curtain countries, particularly within East Germany and Romania, whose ruling Communist Party governments were not recognised by the western powers. The Leipzig Trade Fair was a major event in the East German trading network. For each trade fair Sternberg had his Rolls Royce car taken to Leipzig by his chauffeur, and was driven around in it with Union Jack pennants xed to the roof. In the UK complex conspiracy theories appeared in the press, claiming that Sternberg and Wilson had sinister espionage connections with Communist countries. In later years it emerged that these theories had been created by British intelligence services (MI5) as part of a wider plot to discredit the Wilson government on the grounds that it was too leftleaning, and not in the national
interest. The conspiracy theories have been analysed comprehensively 2,3 and shown to be without substance. Although there are no published nancial details, the evidence indicates that Rudy Sternbergs business activities were very protable. He owned a large farming estate at Plurenden Manor in Kent, which bred pedigree Holstein cattle. In 1951 he married Monica Prust (Fig. 2), a former dancer with the Royal Ballet. They had two children, Francesca and Roseanne 1. Sternberg died suddenly in 1978 in his 60th year while on holiday. According to probate records his personal wealth in the UK at death was 12,000. This small personal legacy suggests that efcient arrangements had been made to protect his real wealth from inheritance tax. Some of the businesses were conducted via offshore trusts.21 In his later years Sternberg lived in Switzerland occasionally, and reportedly was seeking non-resident status under UK tax law. He was buried in Switzerland.
Following Sternbergs death the Sterling manufacturing businesses were sold (in 1979) to RTZ Chemicals Ltd, a subsidiary of the giant RioTintoZinc multinational mining group. Shortly afterwards RTZ sold the businesses individually, as we describe later. Apparently Sternbergs family kept the trading interests. In 1978 one of these (The Propane Co Ltd) imported 300,000 tons of phosphate rock into the UK and Ireland from East Germany 22 for fertiliser production.
Fig. 2 Sternbergs widow, Lady Plurenden, presenting awards at the company dinner in 1978. In the foreground is John Shaw, nancial director of the Sterling Group of companies.
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Sternberg at Stalybridge: the beginning of manufacture (Albion Mill, 1948)

Encouraged by the success of his import-export businesses, and believing that demand for plastics materials would grow quickly as European national economies recovered from the war, Sternberg decided to start making plastics moulding materials, rather than continue to buy them from established UK suppliers in amounts to meet his export requirements. The largest demand at the time was for Bakelite-type materials. To obtain the knowhow for making these moulding materials (also known as phenolic resins) he hired a chemist, Clarence (Clar) Smith. Smith worked for an established phenolic resin producer, and had the technical expertise needed to build and operate a resin production unit. To house the plant Sternberg bought Albion Mill 4 on Hudderseld Road, Stalybridge (Fig.3) and phenolic resin production started in July 1948. The resin was called Sternite. The new enterprise was called Sterling Moulding Materials Ltd. Its head ofce was in Haddon Street, London W1. Clar Smith became a director of the
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Fig. 3 Albion Mill, early 1950s. Entrance to mill yard on right.
company. He set up residence in Thorncliffe Hall, a large country gentlemans house off Spring Street, Hollingworth. To lead the sales effort John Poole was hired from another resin producer, F.A. Hughes Ltd, based in London.
Sternberg at Stalybridge: the beginning of manufacture
Phenolic and UF resin manufacture

The phenolic resins were made by heating phenol with formaldehyde in glass-lined steel reactors (stills) like those shown in Fig. 4, each equipped with an agitator driven by an electric motor, and a heating/ cooling jacket for steam and water. Each reactor batch was three tons (about 3000 litres). Water produced during the resin-forming chemical reaction was distilled off and condensed (see below). At the end of the chemical reaction the viscous liquid resin was discharged through a valve in the base of the reactor into steel trays where it cooled and solidied as toffee-like slabs. These solid resins are called novolacs. The slabs were broken into chunks ready for further processing. This involved grinding the chunks to a ne powder, then blending it with llers (such as wood our or ground paper), lubricants, curing agents and pigments. About 85% of the production was black. The mixture was then compounded at temperatures below the activation temperature of the curing agent, but sufciently high for the mix to melt and form a homogeneous soft mass. Heated two-roll mills were used for the compounding step. The powdery mix of resin, llers and pigment was metered into the nip of the hot rolls and processed by their kneading action for 12 minutes to fuse it into a soft uniform mass in sheet form. The hot sheet of compound that formed on the mill rolls was stripped off, granulated, sieved and bagged for sale. Liquid phenolic resins (called resoles) were also made, and sold to companies that impregnated them into paper or cloth, which were then cured in heated presses to give solid sheets and boards (such as Formica) and blocks (eg Tufnol) for engineering and structural applications. The phenolic resins were also sold as adhesives and binders to the plywood, chipboard and abrasives industries. Asbestoslled phenolic resins were used by companies that made car brake linings, and other
Fig. 4 Typical installation of resin reactors, showing tops of reactors. The main body and the discharge valves are at the next lower oor level.
friction-resistant components such as clutch plates. Urea-formaldehyde (UF) resins could also be made in the same process. Phenolic and UF resins belong to the group of plastics materials known as thermosets. Once the moulding material has been heated at high pressure in a mould the moulded article cannot be softened again by reheating. This distinguishes them from the group known as
thermoplastics (such as polystyrene or polypropylene). Items made from thermoplastics can be re-melted repeatedly, although they eventually degrade.
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Safety and environmental aspects of phenolic resin manufacture at Albion Mill

Making phenolic resins is a hazardous process. The starting chemicals, phenol and formaldehyde, are both toxic and require careful handling. Phenol causes burns on contact, and is lethal by absorption through the skin. There is now evidence that formaldehyde causes cancer by inhalation, but at the time (and until quite recently) its vapour was considered to be just a strong irritant. There are anecdotal reports of an operator being fatally poisoned as a result of being splashed by phenol at Albion Mill. The chemical reaction of phenol with formaldehyde is exothermic it gives off heat. This self-heating speeds up the reaction further, thus creating more heat. If the heat created within the reactor vessel is not constantly monitored, and removed by appropriate cooling, a runaway reaction will occur. The reactor reaches the temperature of no return. The rapidly accelerating heat and pressure can cause an explosive discharge of the reactor contents, or even a vessel rupture.
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The manufacture of phenolformaldehyde resins has caused a number of serious incidents. An example illustrates the scale of the danger - in 1997 in Ohio a phenolic resin reactor developed a runaway reaction and exploded, killing one worker and injuring seven others.5 The top of the reactor was blown off and landed 130 metres away. The wastewater produced from the reactors as a by-product of the chemical reaction presents a disposal problem it cannot be discharged to a sewer because it contains enough residual phenol to kill the benecial bacteria that are cultivated to purify domestic sewage in treatment works. (Dilute solutions of phenol in water were commonly used as a disinfectant known as carbolic acid). At Albion Mill the phenolcontaminated water was removed by road tanker, and reportedly dumped along with municipal waste into disused claypits in the brickworks at Windmill Lane, Denton. Such so-called co-disposal of industrial and domestic wastes in landlls was accepted
practice in the chemical industry at the time, and complied with contemporary Government dilute and disperse guidance for waste disposal. In 1961 the Governments Water Pollution Research Laboratory published a study of other disposal options at Albion Mill.6 In 1951 there was a dust explosion in the section of the mill where the resin was ground to powder.7 In the streets around Albion Mill there was usually an odour of phenol in the air.
Further developments at Albion Mill Sterling Coated Materials Ltd

In 1953 Sternberg decided to start making coated papers, such as carbon and carbonless copy papers. The now-ubiquitous photocopier did not come on the market until about 1960, and the most common way to produce copies of typed documents was to interleave carbon paper sheets between the blank pages inserted into a typewriter. He hired a chemist with the requisite technical expertise, S.E. (Stanley) Sorrell. The equipment for coating reels of paper and drying the resultant wet web was installed in Albion Mill. The business was named Sterling Coated Materials Ltd. The materials to be coated on to the paper surface were dispersed in volatile solvents in mixing tanks, and the dispersion was spread as a very thin uniform wet lm on the paper web as it was unreeled through the coating machine. The solvent was then evaporated by hot air in a continuous drying oven. As it emerged the dry coated paper was wound on to large reels for sale to end-users.
Expansion of operations to Dukineld and Hollingworth
Expansion of operations to Tower Mill and Etherow Works

By 1956 there was no space to install additional plant in Albion Mill, and to accommodate growth in the phenolic resin and coated paper businesses Sternberg bought Tower Mill. This is a former cotton spinning mill on Park Road, Dukineld, built in 1878.9 Some of the phenolic resin grinding processes, and all the coated paper production, were transferred to Tower Mill from Albion Mill. Two vertical coating machines were installed in the rope race at Tower Mill, and were used to impregnate paper with phenolic resins. These papers were sold for making Formica laminates. Bitumen impregnated paper was also made. The coated paper business diversied into producing pressure-sensitive adhesives (like those used in Sellotape and masking tape, for example), and also into making release papers. Release papers are made by coating paper with a solution of silicone resin in a volatile solvent. The solvent is then evaporated, leaving a nonstick silicone surface coating on the paper. The release papers are used to carry peel-and-stick labels, in the baking industry, and in textile manufacture. The release paper business grew rapidly, and in the mid-70s it was transferred to Etherow Works in Hollingworth, a former textile printworks that Sternberg had bought. The paper coating line installed there was the largest in Europe. The exhaust air stream from the coating line, containing ammable solvent vapour evaporated from the coated layer on the paper, was ducted through beds of activated carbon granules, which absorbed the solvent vapour to prevent air pollution. A re that started in this solvent recovery system destroyed parts of the Etherow Works plant in the early 1980s. There was a small R&D group of chemists engaged on product and process development in a laboratory at Tower Mill. In the 1970s the technical manager was Dr. Len Evans, and the managing director was Dr. Ted Lowe.
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The vapour-laden air from the drying ovens was vented to the atmosphere. The process presented a re and explosion hazard because of the presence in the building of ammable solvent vapours, and the occurrence of sparks from static electricity created by unreeling the paper into the coating machines. There is one record of a re in 1958.8 Small res occurred frequently, and were routinely extinguished using carbon dioxide piped through nozzles into the drying ovens from banks of cylinders.
Sterling Colour Company Ltd (Albion Mill)

In 1960 Sternberg began manufacturing uorescent pigments, a product that was in its infancy in the UK and Europe. The pigment manufacturing plant was set up in a prefabricated building in the yard at Albion Mill. The market for uorescent pigments grew quickly, and Sterling Colour Company became one of the largest producers outside the US. The pigment manufacturing process was invented at Albion Mill by two chemists, Dr. Ben Frenkel and Mr Herbert Nickolls, and was granted a patent in 1964 (British Patent 966,316). The colour company employed only a handful of people, and the uorescent pigment product had a very high prot margin.
The expansion to Queen Mill (Foundry Street, Dukineld)

Cotton spinning at Queen Mill ended in 1961 9 and Sternberg bought the premises. The phenolics division of Sterling Moulding Materials had continued to grow, and it was decided to consolidate the Tower Mill and Albion Mill processing of phenolic moulding powder into Queen Mill. Production of the basic phenolic resins continued in the chemical reactors at Albion Mill. The resins in chunk form were loaded into drums there, and taken to Queen Mill for further processing. There the solid resins (so-called novolacs) were ground to a powder, and mixed with lubricants, curing agents, llers and pigments (mainly black). The mixture was then compounded on steam-heated two-roll mills in tandem. There were two tandem mills at Queen Mill, and they could produce about 500 kg per hour (120 tonnes per week). Coloured phenolic moulding powders (red, green, brown) were made on two extruder-type mixing machines (Buss KoKneaders). The moulding materials were sold to companies making a wide range of items such as telephones, knobs, switches, radio cabinets, toilet seats, car battery cases and pan handles for cookware. Brown and black ureaformaldehyde (UF) moulding powders were made at Queen Mill on the same plant, with the basic resins coming from the Albion Mill chemical reactors. Production rate of UF resins was about 80 tonnes per week. In 1968 there was an explosion at Queen Mill caused by the ignition of resin dust in a chimney used to vent process dust and fumes to the atmosphere. The explosion occurred at 7 am, just as the night shift nished. Cars parked in the mill yard were damaged by debris but there were no casualties. In 1966 a small chemical process unit was set up at Albion Mill to make epoxy resin moulding powders and liquids under licence from a US company, Dexter Corporation. The business was called HysolSterling. The epoxies were sold
Pigment manufacture
To make the pigments, uorescent dyes (which are soluble in common solvents and not particularly lightstable) were dispersed in small amounts (about 0.5%) into a mixture of melamine and formaldehyde. The mixture was placed in racks of shallow steel trays in ovens and heated. The melamine and formaldehyde reacted together to form a thermoset resin. The dye, dissolved in the resin starting components, thus became transformed into an insoluble light-stable form locked into the resin. The cooled slabs of coloured resin were then milled to ne powder. This powder is the uorescent pigment, ready for sale to be dispersed in liquids to make inks, textile coatings and paints. Reds, yellows and greens were the most commonly produced colours.
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The businesses after Sternbergs death the 1979 sale to RTZ Chemicals Ltd
for encapsulation of electronic components. In 1976 Dexter withdrew the licence and moved the production to its own plant in Munich. Horace Fussell was the director in charge of the resin operations at Albion and Queen Mills, and Harry Goddard was works manager. Some of the ofce windows at Queen Mill had frosted glass panes with Queen Victorias head in prole engraved on them. Following the success of the dark-coloured ureaformaldehyde (UF) resins, a plant to make white UF resin was set up at Whitelands Mill. UF resin was made on that site in a single still, and mixed as a wet powder with paper dust (cellulose) and other ingredients in a cutter/mixer unit. It was then dried on a mesh belt dryer prior to grinding and bagging. White UF resin is used widely for making electrical plugs and switches, and in the form of water-based dispersions as a binder in the manufacture of glass bre insulation and chipboard. Shortly after Sternbergs death in 1978, RTZ Chemicals Ltd bought all the Sterling manufacturing businesses (including polystyrene see later) in a 6 million cash deal. RTZ Chemicals Ltd already owned two chemical plants in East Manchester: Manchem Ltd, and Manox Ltd. The phenolic and UF resin businesses, with a capacity of about 15,000 tons per year, continued to operate under the RTZ Chemicals Ltd ownership until 1983. The phenolics business was then sold to Bakelite AG, based in Germany, and manufacturing stopped about two years later. A former plant manager at Queen Mill, Harry Goddard, bought the white UF resin business, and operated it as Abbey Thermosets Ltd in part of Whitelands Mill and part of Phoenix Works on Wagstaff Street, Stalybridge. The former technical manager of the Sterling Colour Company, Geoff Fry, bought its equipment from Albion Mill, and began making uorescent pigments under the name NovaGlo Ltd in
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part of Phoenix Works (Stanley Street, Stalybridge). Queen Mill was sold to a local engineering company (RSJ Engineering Ltd) who demolished it in 19834, and sold the site to Morrisons Supermarkets. Albion Mill also was demolished about the same time, and the site became a housing development. The Sterling Coated Materials plant at Hollingworth was sold to a Scandinavian paper company, and the Tower Mill plant was closed in 1982.
The Sterling polystyrene operations in Stalybridge

In 1958 Sternberg bought Castle Mill (Fig. 5, 6, 7, 8) on Dale Street, Stalybridge, and converted it to a chemical plant for making polystyrene. This was Sternbergs rst venture into thermoplastics moulding materials. Castle Mill was built in 1891, and had spun cotton until the 1930s.4 Its steam engine and machinery were then removed. During the Second World War, the mill was used as a storage depot by the Army. The mill cellar was equipped as a decontamination centre 10 for use in the event of chemical weapons such as mustard gas 28 being used in enemy bombing raids. (The context to this is that Germany had used mustard gas in artillery shells as a battleeld weapon during World War I. Government concern that it would be used for bombing UK civilian targets in the Second World War led to decontamination stations being set up throughout the UK as a civil defence measure). In the late 1950s polystyrene moulding materials were already being made in the UK at Barry (by the Dow Chemical Co), at Newport (by Monsanto Ltd), at Brantham, Essex (by BXL Ltd), and at the Carrington petrochemical complex near Urmston (by Petrocarbon Ltd, later to become Shell Chemicals UK Ltd). Total annual UK production was about 39,000 tons.
Fig. 5 Castle Mill prior to demolition in 1982. Taken from Bayley Street, looking across the site of the former terraced houses in Port Street and Duke Street. The building on the left with the green roof was a working mens club. Page 10 Polystyrene operations in Stalybridge
Fig. 7 Castle Mill viewed from the far side of the River Tame.
Fig. 6 Castle Mill viewed from the top of John Summerss chimney in 1981. Just beyond the roof of the mill the rear of the houses on Bayley Street are visible. The one whose rear projects out is the Stakes pub.
Fig. 8 Castle Mill (left) from the Bayley Street - River Tame bridge. Polystyrene operations in Stalybridge Page 11
Polystyrene manufacture
Polystyrene is made from styrene, a sweet-smelling waterlike (but ammable) liquid.26 The basic molecular units of styrene (the so-called monomer) can be made to join together in long chains, rather like the way paper clips can be linked into a chain. This process is called addition polymerisation, and the result is the polymer, polystyrene. Polystyrene is a very versatile material it can be injection moulded rapidly, and can be extruded into sheets that are subsequently shaped (thermoformed) into objects ranging from refrigerator cabinet interiors to food packaging trays. During the extrusion process gases can be injected into the molten polymer, thereby expanding it to produce very light foam sheet or boards that have valuable insulation properties for use in food packaging and construction. Polystyrene exists as two broad types. The simplest type is a transparent, fairly brittle material, called crystal (or general purpose) polystyrene (used for example in CD boxes). A more structurally complex type having higher toughness (impact strength) is called highimpact polystyrene (HIPS), and is made by incorporating up to 10% of a synthetic rubber (called polybutadiene) into the styrene polymerisation process (see later).
To obtain know-how for making polystyrene Sternberg hired a US consultant, Richard B. Bishop.11 Under Bishops guidance the rst chemical reactors for making polystyrene were installed in Castle Mill in 1959, and production started in 1960. To provide technical support for the edgling business, Sternberg hired Zigmund Kromolicki (Fig. 9), a polymer chemist who had been working in polystyrene technology for BXL Ltd at Brantham in Essex.12 He moved to Castle Mill in 1959 and set up an R&D laboratory, pilot plant and materials testing facilities. Two processes were installed at Castle Mill. One was a batch mass polymerisation system known as the plate and frame press process. This was used mainly for making high impact polystyrene; it will be described later. The second process was a suspension reactor system for making crystal polystyrene and styrene-acrylonitrile (SAN) copolymers. For reasons described below the suspension process is sometimes called the bead process.
Fig. 9 Zigmund Kromolicki (rear) and Jim Butterworth (front)
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Polystyrene operations in Stalybridge
The suspension (or bead) process

In the suspension process demineralised water is charged to an agitated reactor (similar to those shown in Fig. 4) and styrene monomer and stabilising chemicals are added. The ratio of styrene to water is about 40/60 percent. The agitation disperses the styrene monomer as a dense cloud (suspension) of ne droplets (about 1-2 mm in diameter) in the water. The stabilising additives keep the droplets from coalescing as the reactor is then taken through a heating cycle. The droplets become sticky, and then harden as the heat turns the styrene monomer into solid polystyrene beads. The reactor is then cooled, and its contents (in the form of a slurry) are discharged to a wash vessel. From this they are pumped through a centrifuge to spin the water from the solid beads. The beads are then dried in a hot air stream. The suspension process for making styreneacrylonitrile (SAN) copolymer beads is shown in Fig. 10.
Usually the beads are fed to an extruder and granulated to form cylindrical pellets about 3 mm diameter and about 3-5 mm long for ease of handling.
Fig. 10 SAN System owsheet Page 13
The press process

To make the toughened type of polystyrene (called high impact polystyrene or HIPS), bales of synthetic rubber were nely shredded in a grinder (Fig 11) and then added in amounts of 6 to 10% by weight to a stirred vessel containing styrene monomer. The rubber granules dissolved slowly in the styrene to give a solution similar in consistency to motor oil. This solution was ltered to remove any undissolved rubber (known as gel). The solution of rubber in styrene was then pumped to an agitated reactor of about 8000 litres capacity (similar to those in Fig. 4) and heated to polymerise the styrene monomer. When the total solids content in the reactor (i.e., the initial percent of rubber present, plus the percent of polystyrene formed by reaction) reached 3040 percent, the reactor contents (called the prepolymer, and having a thick syrup-like consistency) were discharged via a valve in the reactor base into a piece of equipment called a plate-andframe press reactor (Figs. 12
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and 13). This was located on the ground oor of the mill. (The prepolymerisation reactors hung from the second oor). The press reactor was used to convert the prepolymer into solid polymer. It consisted of a series of alternating metal frames and plates, built up in the form of a long sandwich on horizontal rails, and clamped together by hydraulic pressure. The assembled press had 55 frames and was about 40 feet long. The frames were in effect vertical boxes, in which the polymer formed as blocks (see below). The plates were hollow, so that steam or cooling water could be passed through each of them to heat or cool the contents of the adjacent frames. The assembled press was lled with prepolymer via a piping manifold from the reactor discharge valve on the oor above, so that each frame in the press formed a separate reaction chamber. When all the frames were full, the lling pipework was sealed. Steam was then admitted to the plates until the temperature of the mass inside the frames began to rise rapidly due to the heat-releasing
(exothermic) nature of the polymerisation reaction. The steam was then shut off, and the reaction allowed to rise by self-heating to its peak temperature (about 175 degrees C). Cooling water was then admitted to the plates, and when the press was cold the clamping system was released. The frames and plates were then separated from each other (sometimes with great difculty) and the solid blocks of polymer were pushed from each frame as it hung on the rails of the press. The blocks were each about 150 mm thick, about 1000 mm high and 500 mm wide. About eight tons of blocks were produced in one press batch. The plates and frames of the press were made of cast aluminium to maximise the rate at which heat was transferred into and out of the reacting mass. Since aluminium is a soft metal, they were sometimes damaged during removal of the polymer blocks. There was an engineering workshop on the ground oor of Castle Mill dedicated to their constant repair. Surface atness was particularly important to ensure that the plates and
frames tted tightly together when assembled to form the press structure. As the blocks were pushed free from the press frames they fell through a wide slot in the oor on to a conveyor belt in the cellar. This carried them to the mill yard where they were stacked on pallets. They were then stored in a refrigerated building for several days to make them brittle enough to be granulated. The chilled blocks were fed mechanically and slowly, one at a time, into a powerful rotary grinding machine called a Gruendler Hog. Its rotors were 76 cm in diameter and width, and ran at 1000 rpm. The blades took a ve second bite from one end of a block, disengaged and re-accelerated for about ten seconds, then bit again. This automatically timed sequence continued until a complete block was granulated into small akes. The grinder rotors weighed about 3 tons, and were driven by a 150 hp motor. The grinding was very noisy, and at night could be heard at a considerable distance from the site. The grinders were in the buildings of a former boxworks (Butterworth and Clifford Ltd)
Fig. 12 A plate and frame press for making polystyrene by a batch mass process. An individual plate and frame are shown. The lugs on the sides of the frame sit on horizontal rails. The reaction takes place in the volume enclosed by each frame.
Fig. 11 Grinder for shredding blocks of synthetic rubber into granules. Basically these machines are large mincers driven by an electric motor via a gear box. The granules are then dissolved in styrene monomer to make the solution that is the feedstock for making high-impact polystyrene.
at the rear of Castle Mill (Fig. 14). These buildings also housed an engineering workshop and drawing ofces for Castle Mill. The rough plastic granules from the grinders were blown through aluminium pipes by compressed air to storage silos located on the top oor of the mill (Fig. 15). From there they were fed via a blending system (Fig. 16) to extruders located
two oors below for melting, mixing and pelletisation. This system allowed pigments and other additives to be incorporated into the polymer to meet end-use customer needs. Crystal polystyrene was also made in the press process, and this could be blended with the high-impact polystyrene granulate to dilute its rubber content and thus make
medium-impact grades. The dry blending of granules, pellets and additives (pigments, lubricants, antioxidants) was done on the third oor of the mill in rotating conical blenders (Fig. 16) that each held about 1 ton of materials. The blender contents were dumped through chutes in the oor into hoppers that fed the extruders on the oor below.
Fig. 13 Press reactor, end-on-view. Hydraulic clamping ram is in the foreground.
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Fig. 15 Material hoppers on the 3rd oor of Castle Mill
Fig. 14 Site plan in 1978
Fig. 16 Conical blenders on the 2nd oor of Castle Mill Page 16 Polystyrene operations in Stalybridge
In 1967 Sternberg bought the polystyrene business of BXL Ltd, located at Brantham in Essex, and in 1968 moved the plant to the former John Summers Globe Ironworks (the Globe Site- see Figs. 17 and 18, and the postscript to this memoir). The Globe Site lies across the River Tame from Castle Mill (Fig. 19). The new plant drew some of its services (steam, compressed air etc) from Castle Mill via pipetracks above the river, and
an ex-army Bailey Bridge was installed to connect the two sites near the line of the aqueduct (Figs. 19 and 20) that carries the Hudderseld Canal over the river. Several people came to Stalybridge from BXL. These included George Carrothers who became production manager, Duffy Alldus process supervisor, Peter Mullet, Frank Beeson and Albert Stringer process operators, and Phil Johnson, a chemist. (Roger
Quick, also a chemist from BXL, had coincidentally joined Sterling a year earlier, and was working in R&D in Castle Mill). Albert Stringer died in the 1985 British Airways plane re at Manchester Airport.
Fig. 17 Globe Site, from Castle Mill roof Polystyrene operations in Stalybridge
Fig. 18 Globe Site, John Summers Iron Works chimney on right Page 17
Fig. 19 Bailey bridge and canal aqueduct over the River Tame
Fig. 20 Canal aqueduct over the River Tame
The plant on Globe Site had two process sections. One section was a suspension (bead) polymerisation plant. The other section consisted of ve continuous mass polymerisation units; it was called the tower plant (Figs.21, 22,23,24,25 and 26). The tower plant was based on a process developed and commercialised in Germany
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in the 1930s. Unlike the press process, the towers enabled polymer pellets to be made continuously from feed (styrene monomer, or rubber-styrene solution). The group of towers produced about 56 tons per day. But the product quality limited the range of uses for which it could be sold. For that reason the tower process was later discontinued.
In 1969 Sternberg bought another tower unit from a small company in Bolton called Kaylis Plastics Ltd. This was installed on Globe Site alongside the other tower lines. Kaylis was owned by a Mr Sam Kaufman, who previously had a plant (Kayson Plastics) in Canada. At this time there was no equipment to prepare rubber solution on Globe Site. Rubber
solution to feed the tower units making high-impact polystyrene was prepared in the dissolving vessels in Castle Mill, and taken in a road tanker across the Bailey Bridge to the Globe Site.13 In 1969 a rubber dissolving plant was installed on Globe Site. To force the conversion of styrene to polystyrene towards completion in the towers, a special catalyst called BXC-1 was added in small
Fig. 21 Tower plant
Fig. 24 Tops of the tower reactors
Figs. 22, 23 Tower plant reactor area Polystyrene operations in Stalybridge
Fig. 25 Pre-poly reactors at the 1st oor level of the tower plant Page 19
that surround radar equipment (radomes). In the late 1960s extensive experimental work on the polymerisation of butadiene by an emulsion process was carried out in the laboratory at Castle Mill. This was led by Dr. J.G. Robinson, and was part of an (unfullled) plan to develop technology for making a rubber-modied polymer called ABS (acrylonitrile-butadienestyrene). Occasionally batches of a polystyrene emulsion were made in the Castle Mill suspension plant for sale to a company (International Synthetic Rubber Ltd - see below) who used it in rubber latex compounding. In the early days of degradable plastics, several tons of polystyrene containing methyl isopropenyl ketone were made in the Castle Mill suspension plant for evaluation by a major international packaging company, Van Leer. Foam packaging (such as egg boxes) made from this intentionally light-sensitised polymer degraded to a ne powder in about twelve months outdoors, due to the effect of light and weather. The intention was to help solve the (aesthetic) problems of plastics litter.
By the mid-1960s four press plants had been installed in Castle Mill. Each one produced 8 tons per day of polystyrene. The press process was slow and labour intensive, and this factor ruled it out as a viable option for further expansion of the business. The presses were closed and scrapped in the early 1970s. In 1964 Sternberg sold press plant know-how to a polystyrene company in the Ukraine. The plant was built within a large coal-based chemical plant site at Gorlovka. It was started up by two staff sent from Stalybridge (Rodney Felton, assistant manager at Castle Mill, and Zigmund Kromolicki, the R&D manager. Dr. Frenkel, who spoke Russian, was also present). About this time Sternberg bought a 30% share in a 60,000 tons per year styrene monomer plant (Solent Chemicals Ltd). This was a joint venture with International Synthetic Rubber Ltd (ISR) and was located at Hythe, near Southampton; its feedstock (ethylbenzene) came from an ICI petrochemicals plant on Teeside.
Fig. 26 Tower plant, with the canteen in the foreground
amounts to the plant feed. This catalyst 25 was made in the pilot plant area of Castle Mill by reacting secondary butylbenzene with benzoyl peroxide. There was no other source in the world for the catalyst, and Sterling exported some of it at a huge prot to a polystyrene producer in India and another in South Africa who also used the tower process and thus relied on the catalyst. When the Globe Site tower plant was demolished in 1982, the catalyst plant and manufacturing know-how for making BXC-1 were transferred to the Indian
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company. Also at that time two of the tower lines, which had been coupled together (around 1973) and modernised to increase output by adding a devolatiliser (see below) were bought by a local engineering company and exported to India.14 Another unusual product made in the Castle Mill pilot plant was a foamable polystyrene lled with titanium dioxide. This high-value material was sold to British Aerospace Corporation (now BAE Systems) for moulding the domes
The semi-continuous polystyrene process in Castle Mill

To ensure that his business grew and stayed competitive, Sternberg needed to obtain an improved process that made polystyrene continuously (24/7). Technical know-how for such processes was not readily available, since the few companies (Dow, Monsanto, Union Carbide) who had developed it did not (with few exceptions) license their technology to others. In 1967, in the light of this situation, Sternberg hired the services of an American consultant, Dr. John L. McCurdy (Fig. 27). Dr. McCurdy was a chemical engineer who had worked in R&D, and later in production management, for a major US polystyrene producer, the Dow Chemical Company. He had left Dow in 1958 to start up his own small-scale polystyrene plants in the US. In 1964 he sold these three plants to the chemicals division of a major oil company (Amoco Chemicals Corporation, later to be merged into BP), and around 1965 he began to offer his services worldwide as a consultant 23,24 in polystyrene process technology. Dow Chemical Company was a pioneer in large-scale continuous mass polymerisation process technology, and its polystyrene materials were the benchmarks of quality in the industry. Dr. McCurdys previous employment with Dow therefore lent him credibility as an expert in that eld of technology. It was to turn out later, in his relations with Sternberg and other clients that McCurdys expertise was quite limited, and that his approach to technical matters and the legal aspects of intellectual property was sometimes cavalier.24 Dr. McCurdys rst project for Sternberg was to convert part of the press plant in Castle Mill into a semi-continuous process capable of making 16 tons per day of high impact polystyrene. The new unit was known as the U-Tube plant, for reasons described below. It was commissioned in 1970.
Fig. 27 Dr. McCurdy (left) and Alan Linton (right) Semi-continuous polystyrene process Page 21
The U-Tube process

In this process (Fig. 28) the prepolymerisation of styrenerubber solution was carried out in batches (about 8 tons) in each of two of the reactors that had been used to feed the press process. Ethylbenzene was added to the rubber solution as an unreactive diluent to reduce the viscosity of the reacting mass and thus make it easier to pump through the plant. The prepolymer batch was then pumped into the socalled U-Tube reactor (see below) and heated until the reaction began to self-heat (exotherm), ultimately reaching a temperature of about 180 degrees C. At this point about 85% of the reacting mass had been converted to polymer. It was then pumped from the U-Tube reactor into a heated holding tank that was kept topped-up by subsequent batches. From the holding tank onward the production process was continuous. The molten mass was pumped continuously from the holding tank into a further heated vessel that was kept under vacuum. This vessel is called a devolatiliser, and its function was to strip (evaporate) volatile materials (the ethylbenzene diluent and unconverted styrene monomer) out of the molten polymer mass. These vapours were condensed, puried, and recycled into subsequent prepolymerisation batches. The stripped molten polymer (typically at about 230 degrees centigrade) was pumped continuously from the devolatiliser base through a heated die plate containing an array of 3mm diameter holes to form strands (rather like spaghetti). The strands were cooled by drawing through a
Fig. 28 U-Tube process Page 22 Semi-continuous polystyrene process
water bath, dried by an air blast, and then granulated to pellets (Fig. 29). The screened and dried pellets were fed to bagging units or blown to silos. The U-Tube plant was socalled because its second stage reactor contained a large bundle (about 600) of U-shaped steel tubes. These tubes (total length 900 metres) hung vertically in the U-Tube reactor and carried owing heat transfer oil for controlled heating and cooling of the reacting mass within the vessel. The hot oil (at a temperature of about 260 degrees C) was supplied from a furnace located in the mill boilerhouse. The reactor was 2 metres in diameter, and 6 metres high. The U-Tube plant was a very successful installation, technically and commercially.
The U-Tube plant cost 110,000, and in 1972 its product sales value was about 700,000.15 In 2012 terms, these respective gures are 2 million and 15 million (approximately). The devolatilisation step mentioned above was an important feature of the U-Tube process because it reduced the level of chemical impurities
in the nished product. It was new technology at Stalybridge, although it was already used elsewhere by other producers. Polystyrene was being used increasingly for food packaging, and in some applications impurities can diffuse (in minute amounts) from the plastic package into the food and cause taint. These impurities in the
plastic are generally known as residual monomers, and nding ways to reduce them was to become an important industrywide goal, due to consumer concerns about their potential health effects in food packaged in plastics. An important improvement in polymer devolatilisation technology was later invented in Stalybridge (in 1978) and subsequently became used worldwide in the polymer industry.16 The U-Tube plant was operated until 1981, and was scrapped during the demolition of Castle Mill (Fig. 44). Detailed plans had been drawn up in about 1974 to build a second larger UTube unit on Globe Site, but the project was abandoned, although some equipment for it was fabricated and placed in storage.
Fig. 29 Strands of impact polystyrene emerging from the water cooling bath and passing via the air knife for drying, to a pelletiser. The air knife is the horizontal pipe over the strands. It blasts the wet strands with air via a slot. The extrusion diehead from which the molten strands are pumped, is off the picture to the lower right. Semi-continuous polystyrene process Page 23
The advent of large-scale continuous polystyrene manufacture the horizontal reactor plant
The next expansion of the business, proposed by Dr. McCurdy, was based on a continuous polystyrene process that had been built by Amoco Chemicals Corporation in the US in 1967 under his general guidance. The proposed Stalybridge plant would be able to produce about 1.5 tons per hour of polystyrene for 8000 hours per year. There were potential technical and legal issues attached to implementing the McCurdy proposal. The legal issues were resolved in 1970.24 Construction of the plant began in 1969 on Globe Site. It was known as the horizontal plant (H-1) because its reactors were arranged as a series (of three) horizontal cylinders (see Figs. 30, 31, 32). These had internal coils carrying heat transfer oil, alternating with agitator blades mounted on a horizontal shaft. It was started up in 1972. Quickly it became clear that, unlike the U-Tube process, the plant as built could not deliver the high quality of rubber-toughened polystyrene product that Dr McCurdy had led Sternberg to expect, and that the European market needed. It also became clear that in spite of his impressive pedigree, McCurdy had a limited understanding of the chemistry and physics underlying the horizontal reactor process problems, and did not know how to x them. In formulating the process concept he had made a fundamentally awed (and unchallenged) assumption that the uid ow pattern through the horizontal reactors would be an ideal form known as plug ow. He enlisted the help of a chemical engineer, Marvin Jarvis, with whom he had worked at Dow Chemical, and had later formed a business in the US offering polystyrene processes (Emejota Engineering). Jarvis (Fig. 33) was more technically competent than McCurdy, but the urgent task of problem-solving fell totally on a small group of technologists based in the Castle Mill laboratory. A major challenge in trying to improve the H-1 product quality was that the signicance of the complex microscopically observable structure within
Fig. 30 First horizontal reactor plant, H-1 (Globe Site). The plant made high impact (rubber toughened) polystyrene continuously at about 36 tonnes per 24 hours. Page 24
Figs. 31, 32 H-1 plant
Large-scale continuous polystyrene manufacture
maximised toughness and stiffness properties of the material. If that material microstructure could be dened, then in principle the process modications for creating it could be designed and retrotted to the plant to make the target material. The necessary mathematical analysis to dene the optimum particle morphology in highimpact polystyrene was developed at Castle Mill laboratory in 1973. Part of it was later published and became generally accepted in the polymer industry as the fundamental model that denes the optimum microscopic structure of rubber-modied polystyrene and related materials.17 The engineering modications to H-1, derived from the analysis, were implemented in 19731974.27 These additions to the plant were installed upstream of the rst stage horizontal reactor, and were known as the recycle occluder-inverter system (Fig. 35). The improved structure and properties of polymer made using the new system provided validation of the mathematical analysis, but
Fig. 33 Marvin Jarvis
the theoretical benets could not be achieved fully, because other unforeseen internal design problems were discovered in the plants rst-stage horizontal reactor, and these could not be corrected without a radical re-build. The internal design of the rst stage horizontal reactor (unpredictably) damaged the benecial particle structure generated upstream in the recycle occluder-inverter system. By 1974 enough knowledge and experience had been gained
in horizontal reactor plant technology at Stalybridge that H-1 could be operated to produce a satisfactory high-impact polystyrene product. Plans were drawn up to build a more technically-advanced second line (H-2) on Globe Site alongside H-1 (Figs. 36 and 37). In 1973 Sternberg swapped the horizontal reactor plant technology with a major US plastics company, Foster Grant, in return for a large quantity of styrene monomer, which they
rubber-toughened polystyrene, and the mechanism by which that structure was formed in a continuous reaction process, were not fully understood at the time. The few existing scientic publications discussing the creation, signicance and analysis of impact polystyrene particle structure (known as rubber particle morphology - see Fig. 34) in the technical journals and the patent literature were often contradictory, speculative and of limited value. To make progress in solving the H-1 plant problems, a fundamental theoretical analysis of impact polystyrene morphology was needed. The objective of such an analysis was to dene an optimum material microstructure that
Fig. 34 Structure of impact polystyrene magnied 7000 times using an electron microscope. The particles are rubber, lled with smaller particles of polystyrene. The composite particles are locked chemically into a matrix of polystyrene (the background in the picture). The composite particles are up to about 10 microns in diameter, ie about one tenth the diameter of a human hair. Page 25
Fig. 35 The recycle occluder-inverter system on H-1, Stalybridge. The 1st stage horizontal reactor top is in the foreground. The occluder is on the green platform; the inverter below.
produced. Styrene was in very short supply at the time, and its price was escalating rapidly (see below). Reportedly Sternberg sold the styrene monomer in the international chemicals market and made a prot of 500,000 without taking delivery of the styrene. The deal was based on the fact that Foster Grant had its own styrene monomer plant (100,000 tons per year capacity)
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at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and could thus supply Sternberg with the monomer at production cost and store it for him there. Styrene monomer is made by reacting benzene with ethylene to form ethylbenzene; this is then dehydrogenated to form styrene monomer. Using its own styrene monomer, Foster Grant already made polystyrene at Leominster in Massachusetts, at
Chesapeake (Virginia), and in Peru (Illinois), using suspension polymerisation processes. They wanted the horizontal reactor plant technology because it used much less energy to make each ton of product than the batch manufacturing processes they were using. The context to this situation is that worldwide
Figs. 36, 37 H-2 plant
energy costs were soaring as a result of war in the middle east. This escalation was the so-called oil shock. Between October 1973 and January 1974 crude oil prices trebled following a long period of stability and low
price. The sudden impact on the economics of the petrochemical and plastics industries was immense. The technology-for-styrene swap deal led to the construction of a horizontal reactor plant at Chesapeake (Virginia) in 1976. The plants reactors were built in Oldham by Buckley and Taylor Ltd (which later became Oldham Engineering Ltd). One of the authors (TC) and a Stalybridge plant manager (Duffy Alldus) spent a month at Chesapeake commissioning the plant. Fig. 38 shows some of the start-up team. By 1985 a further two horizontal reactor plants had been built (in Virginia and Illinois) and the three plants were making a total of 126,000 tons of polystyrene per year. At Stalybridge, in parallel with the initial US activity at Chesapeake, a second horizontal reactor plant (H-2) was under construction on Globe Site; it was started up in 1977 (Figs. 36 and 37). Shortly after entering the styrene monomer for technology swap with Sternberg, Foster Grant was bought by American Hoechst Corporation, the
US division of the European chemical giant Hoechst, based in Germany. Hoechst became interested in licensing the horizontal reactor process to third parties via its engineering subsidiary, Uhde AG, which was based in Frankfurt. Some of the technical and engineering staff at Stalybridge became deeply involved in these new international partnership aspects of the Sterling business The year 1977 saw the peak of polystyrene production at Stalybridge under the Sterling banner. Output was about 60,000 tons per year. Sales revenue in that year from polystyrene was about 12 million, and gross prot was about 3 million. Spending on R&D was about 72,000, and a further amount of about 80,000 was spent on providing technical support to customers (Don Sellars led the technical service group of six polymer technologists). From the beginning of the polystyrene activities in Castle Mill the process of compounding polystyrene was carried out. Compounding involves blending the plastic pellets with pigments and other additives to
Fig. 38 Chesapeake start-up team. Back row, 2nd from right: Peter Doyle (Sterling), 3rd from right: Duffy Alldus
meet customer requirements, then melting and mixing the blend in extruders, followed by pelletisation. This process required expertise in the technology of blending pigments and dyes into polymer to match colours required by customers, and a colour laboratory was set up in Castle Mill (Fig. 39). The extrusion process was located on the rst oor of the mill and used nine extruders. Throughput was about 450 tonnes per week. A polymer
related to polystyrene, called ABS, was also made in Castle Mill using two Banbury mixers. The ABS was bought in as a concentrate (in crumb form)
Fig. 39 Colour laboratory Page 27
and blended with styreneacrylonitrile (SAN) copolymer made in the Castle Mill suspension reactors. Capacity was about 200 tons per month. The extruder oor was a very hot and noisy environment. Operators worked a three-shift system, seven days per week. As the compounding activities grew, Sternberg bought Phoenix Works (across the Hudderseld Narrow Canal from Castle Mill) in 1972. Phoenix Works had previously housed a company called Robert Broadbent &
Son Ltd that made stone crushers (Fig. 40) and textile machinery. The site was laid out for heavy engineering. It had high workshop bays tted with overhead cranes, and a large drawing ofce. The former facilities proved useful in the mid 1970s, when a horizontal reactor in H-1 suffered an internal failure. It was taken to a workshop bay in Phoenix Works, cut open, and repaired in a heroic engineering operation (Figs. 41 and 42).
To link Castle Mill with Phoenix Works a footbridge was installed over the canal (just above water level the canal was not navigable, but was maintained by British Waterways). In 1972 a new company (Sterling Construction Co Ltd) was set up to handle all the mechanical and chemical engineering design aspects of process expansion and development. This was housed in Phoenix Works, and was led by Rodney Felton, former works manager at Castle Mill. Shortly afterwards he left Sterling to build a UTube polystyrene plant for a company in the US (Hammond Plastics). He took with him a set of engineering drawings, and one of the Stalybridge plant managers, Bill Mannion. These actions became the subject of litigation by Sternberg, who considered that his trade secrets had been stolen, and had Felton arrested at Manchester Airport when he stepped off a return ight from the US. In the litigation that followed the High Court disagreed that the process details could be regarded as trade secrets.15 Rodney Felton was replaced by Jim Butterworth (Figs 9
Figs. 41, 42 Repair of horizontal reactor, Phoenix Works
and 43) as manager of Sterling Construction Ltd. Butterworths arrival was part of a radical change in the senior management of the Sterling polystyrene business in 1972. The change was mainly driven by a Labour Party initiative called In Place of Strife. This required employers to set up Works Councils and consultation processes, in the hope that they would reduce the prevalent nationwide trend towards militant trade union activity.
Fig. 40 Broadbent stone crusher, preserved at Portland Basin Museum Page 28
director. Under the DuncanBrown management regime a canteen was built on Globe Site, and a social club was established on Grosvenor Street, Stalybridge. A training centre serving all the companies was set up in Albion Mill under Barry Hale (former works manager at Tower Mill). In 1973 the R&D laboratory for the polystyrene business was moved from Castle Mill to a new building (Fig. 43) on the corner of Bridge Street and Bayley Street, adjacent to what was then Manro Products Ltd, and is now Stepan.18 In 1977 many of the R&D staff were made redundant in a cost-cutting exercise. Some were later re-hired. A second oor was added to the R&D building to accommodate sales and administration ofces. The quality control and technical services laboratories remained in Castle Mill. Just prior to this Zigmund Kromolicki, who was head of R&D, had left the company, and R&D management had passed to Mike Evans, a chemist who had been recruited in 1972 from Shell Chemicals at Carrington. He had been hired to provide
expertise in manufacturing expandable polystyrene using the suspension plant on Globe Site, but the business venture was aborted.
Fig. 43 R&D Laboratory building, Bridge Street. Left to right: Jim Butterworth, Herb Schrob (American Hoechst), Tom Craig (1976)
Clar Smith (see earlier), who had overall responsibility for the Stalybridge businesses, was not enthusiastic about formal worker-management consultation, and was replaced as managing director by Ian Duncan-Brown. Duncan-Brown was related to Lord Wilfred Brown, an industrialist friend of Sternberg, who had advised the Labour Party on the In Place of Strife labour relations proposals. Smith was sent to the US to keep watch on a joint venture that Sternberg had set up in New Jersey with Dr. McCurdy.
In addition to Jim Butterworth, Duncan-Brown hired an exGlacier Metals executive, Alan Linton (Fig. 27) to oversee manufacturing. Frank Heywood (recruited from James North Ltd in Hyde) became general works manager, and Alan Beck (a former trade union shop steward from northeast England) was hired as personnel manager (a rst). Duncan-Brown resigned in 1975 to pursue business interests in South Africa, but the rest of the management team that he had recruited remained. Horace Fussell became managing
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The polystyrene business after Sternbergs death in 1978

In early 1979 the polystyrene business was sold to RTZ Chemicals Ltd. John Mills had been brought in as managing director in 1977. In 1980 RTZ sold the business to a French petrochemical company, ATO Chemical Products (UK) Ltd. Mills stayed with RTZ, and ATO appointed David Gresham (exDow Chemical UK) as managing director. As corporate structures shifted in the French oil and petrochemicals business, ATO became Elf Atochem, then Atona, and in 2004 became Total Petrochemicals UK Ltd. In 1981 the R&D building on Bridge Street was sold to Manro (now Stepan), and a new ofce block (Globe House) was built on Bayley Street. The R&D group moved to the Globe Site where a laboratory and ofces had been created in a building that housed a canteen. In 1982, Castle Mill and Phoenix Works were sold to RSJ Engineering Ltd.29 They demolished Castle Mill, and used Phoenix Works to expand their existing business of selling used process equipment to the plastics and chemicals industry. The tower plant on Globe Site was scrapped, and its site was modied to re-house and modernise the compounding plant that had been in Castle Mill. The Globe Site suspension plant was also scrapped. In about 1983 ATO Chemical re-purchased the derelict Castle Mill site, and built a PVC compounding operation on it. This was sold in 2000. In 1986 the horizontal reactors were removed from H-1 and scrapped. Some of its other components were combined with new vertical reactors to create a new plant version (still called H-1) for making crystal polystyrene. This plant was demolished in 2005. In 1989 a new plant, called H-3, was built on Globe Site (Fig. 45). This plant could make impact or crystal polystyrene grades at about 9 tonnes per hour. It was the rst plant to have a computer control system. From the change of ownership to ATO the pursuit of safety and a commitment to environmental responsibility in plant operations became fundamental parts of the business. An example of environmental action is shown in Fig. 46.
Fig. 44 Demolition of Castle Mill, 1982. The River Tame is on the other side of the rustic fence. The blue cooling towers on the roof are above the old rope race. Page 30
Fig. 45 H-3 plant under construction
Technology developments at Stalybridge

The research and development work carried out in the Sterling polystyrene business led to several patents being granted to protect the companys intellectual property. Technical staff members were allowed to publish scientic papers on their work in peer-reviewed international technical journals dealing with advances in polymer science and technology. These patents and research publications are listed in Publications and patents, at the end of this book. In terms of their subsequent industry-wide applications, the most signicant inventions made at Stalybridge were the process for ash-tank devolatilisation of molten polymer using superheated water microdroplet injection in static mixers (see earlier), and the process concept called recycle occluder-inverter technology. The latter has been adopted widely for controlling rubber particle morphology (see Fig. 34) in continuous mass plants for making impact polystyrene. In connection with the occluder-inverter technology development, a novel analytical procedure was invented for measuring very accurately the size distribution and volume fraction of rubber particles in high impact polystyrene. Sternberg gave generous nancial awards to staff members who obtained patents, or had papers published in technical journals. The awards were presented at annual dinners. Also on these occasions employees who had served ten years with Sterling were given an engraved Rolex watch. Employees were encouraged to study for professional qualications, and to pursue further education generally. Chemical engineering students doing so-called sandwich degree courses were employed for their industrial experience year, and some of them returned to Sterling as full-time employees following graduation.
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Safety and environmental aspects of the Sterling polystyrene operations

To form a balanced historical perspective of these aspects of the operations, the relatively weak status of environmental and safety legislation during the period 19591974 must be kept in mind. The environment (air, water, and land) was generally considered capable of absorbing wastes and emissions from industry without incurring signicant damage, provided they were suitably dispersed so as not to cause a nuisance or (perceptibly) affect health. The concept of protecting the environment as a fundamentally worthwhile cause had yet to emerge. On the safety regulation front, the Health and Safety at Work Act and the Health and Safety Executive that policed it, were not created until 1974 (following the report of the public inquiry into the catastrophic explosion of a cyclohexane vapour leak that killed twenty-seven workers in the Nypro Chemicals plant at Flixborough, N. Lincs). Before that time formally structured assessments of risks and hazards were rarely practised in the chemical industry. The consequences of this culture were potentially catastrophic. We mentioned earlier that when styrene is converted to polystyrene heat is released. The resulting increase in temperature speeds up the reaction, and if adequate cooling is not applied an uncontrolled (runaway) reaction develops. The operation of the presses, and the U-Tube process in Castle Mill, depended on allowing a runaway reaction to develop in pressure resistant reactors (the presses or the U-Tube reactor) that could be crash-cooled to contain the reaction pressure safely. But sometimes the containment did not work the press plates and frames could be pushed slightly apart by the accelerating temperature and pressure of the reacting mass in the frames. Hot styrene monomer vapour then leaked under high pressure from the plate/frame joints and formed a potentially explosive atmosphere in parts of the mill. The chance of these ammable vapours igniting was always present, because the electrically heated extruders were located nearby and their electric motors were not ameproof. Occasionally, due to operator error, the reactions in the U-Tube reactor accelerated out of control and emitted styrene and ethylbenzene vapour into the mill (ethylbenzene was used in the U-Tube process as a solvent to reduce the viscosity of the reacting mass it is essentially inert during the polymer forming reaction, and is recycled within the process. If a release created intolerable conditions in the mill, personnel went outside until the vapour had cleared. To put the scale of these re and explosion hazards into an understandable perspective the following example illustrates what can happen when styrene vapour is released accidentally from a reactor and nds a source of ignition. A polystyrene plant (operated by Monsanto Ltd, and similar in size and concept to
Fig. 46 Cleaning up the River Tame at Castle Mill Page 32
the Castle Mill plant) released a styrene vapour cloud following a runaway reaction. The vapour cloud spread over the plant site, found a source of ignition and exploded. The explosion destroyed the reactor building. The shock wave from the blast instantly killed eleven workers who had run away from the process area and were watching the vapour release event from the shelter of a small building located 50 metres away.19 Seven others were injured. One of the processes carried out in the suspension plant in Castle Mill involved the use of acrylonitrile, which is a toxic liquid. Its effects upon skin contact, or upon inhalation of its vapour, are the same as cyanide poisoning. It was stored in bulk in three tanks, each of 40 tons capacity, in the mill yard alongside the river (Fig. 14), but some was kept in the mill on the reactor oor in 200 litre steel drums. There were three acrylonitrile poisoning incidents in Castle Mill; fortunately the victims were treated quickly on site with the antidote (inhaled amyl nitrite) and recovered in hospital.20
In the mill yard, adjacent to Quay Street, there was a rotary dryer used for drying wet polymer powder. A powerful dust explosion and re occurred in the dryer one night in the late 1960s. Some houses in Quay Street were damaged by the blast but there were no injuries. Catalysts (organic peroxides) were used in small amounts to speed up the production rate in the reactors; these chemicals were stored in kegs in the mill cellar they must be kept cool to avoid dangerous decomposition. Workers who weighed these catalysts into small containers and carried them to the reactor oor were each given a pint of milk per shift to offset the irritant effects of the catalyst powders on the nose and throat. In 1977 a full-time occupational health nurse was employed, and a doctor visited the site one halfday per week. A safety ofcer was also employed, and a safety committee was set up as part of the works council. On one occasion in 1975 about ve thousand litres of styrene monomer were accidentally spilled into the River Tame, while being pumped over from
Globe Site to Castle Mill. Styrene oats on top of water. The resulting layer of ammable liquid on the river surface extended several miles along the Tame Valley and could easily have been ignited. Wastewater containing a few percent of acrylonitrile was discharged to the sewer on Bayley Street, but later a small efuent treatment plant to
remove the acrylonitrile was installed on Globe Site. Following initiatives by Tameside Council in 1975 to improve the quality of the River Tame, a large interceptor pit (Fig. 47) was installed in the riverbank to capture oily water discharges from Globe Site. The Tame had been classied by the National Rivers Authority as one of the most polluted rivers in the UK.
Fig. 47 Construction of interceptor pit on Globe Site Page 33
Summary
A rubber grinding and dissolving operation was started on Globe Site in 1970. The rubber grinders (Fig. 11) were at ground level, and the granulated rubber crumb was blown from them by air into the top of one of the four dissolving vessels, each about 5 metres high and lled with 12,000 litres of styrene monomer. The air stream conveying the rubber granules owed through polythene tubing, and there was always a danger that static sparks could develop in the system, in spite of wires that earthed the dissolving vessel to the grinder. Later a grinder was relocated on a rail track above the dissolving tanks, and the rubber blocks (bales) were hoisted up to that level so that the rubber granules dropped by gravity into the dissolvers. More recently a modern dissolving plant was installed (Fig. 48). It was only during the DuncanBrown management period that manuals were written to formalise plant operating procedures and help to train new employees. These manuals focused mainly on obtaining product quality through consistent process operations. This chronicle of the chemistrybased industry that Rudy Sternberg created in the Stalybridge area is a minor sequel to the history of the local cotton industry. As the infrastructure and traditions of that industry declined, the conversion of several redundant cotton mills to chemical plants was a signicant economic development whose details have not been previously recorded.
Fig. 48 Modern rubber dissolving plant, Globe Site Page 34 Safety and environmental aspects of the Sterling polystyrene operations
Postscript: The Globe Site history

The site of the former John Summers Globe Ironworks became an important part of the Stalybridge polystyrene operations, and brought with it a rich industrial heritage. In 1842 John Summers owned a clogmakers shop in Dukineld. Clogs have thick wooden soles that are protected by iron plates xed to the toe, heel and along the sides. These are known as clogirons. Summers bought these, and iron nails, from a nearby forge owned by Giles Potter. He bought Potters business and expanded it. On a visit to the Great Exhibition in London in 1851, Summers saw a nail making machine and bought it for 40. This mechanisation enabled him to grow his market into Yorkshire, Lancashire and North Wales, and he moved to larger premises. These rapidly became too small, and he moved his forge and machine to the site on Bayley Street that would become Globe Ironworks. There he was able to make larger forgings and roll iron bars and sheet. The site eventually contained a large range of furnaces, forges and rolling mills driven by steam engines. A large scale map of the site showing these installations has been deposited in Tameside Local Studies Library. It had an internal railway (Fig 49) served by one locomotive (see Fig. 50). The
Fig. 49 Entrance to John Summers Globe Ironworks. The railway lines branched out within the site. Postscript: The Globe site history
Fig. 50 John Summers locomotive at level crossing on Bayley Street
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line crossed Bayley Street on a level crossing to allow loads to be taken to and from the main railway line. Beneath the site there was an extensive range of ues connecting the furnaces and steam engine boilers to a large brick chimney (see photographs in main text). Some of these ues were uncovered during construction work in Sterling days (Fig. 51). Some of the iron sheet products were galvanised. They were prepared for this by immersion in tanks of hydrochloric acid to
dissolve iron oxide mill scale from their surfaces. This process is known as pickling. Eventually the acid becomes exhausted. The resulting liquid, called pickle liquor or spent acid, is valuable for making iron oxide pigments. It was pumped from the John Summers galvanising plant, via a pipe along the bank of the River Tame, to a rm called The Bridge Colour Company. This was on part of what is now Stepan Chemical property. Iron oxides of various shades from black to red were made by blowing steam and air through
the spent acid in large open brick-lined tanks. Sterling scrapped all the ironworks machinery in 1968 but kept some of the buildings. The detailed melting, forging and rolling operations at Globe Ironworks are not well documented, but a similar contemporary ironworks existed nearby at Park Bridge. A comprehensive archive showing the forges and rolling mills at Park Bridge exists at Tameside Local Studies Library and the Park Bridge visitor centre. That archive provides an insight into the nature of the Globe Ironworks operation.
Fig. 51 Investigating the underground ue system, Globe Site. Note the cast iron support beam. Page 36 Postscript: The Globe site history
Notes and references

1 2 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Smear: Wilson and the Secret State. S. Dorril and R. Ramsay. HarperCollins (1992). The Wilson Plot: How the Spycatchers and their American Allies tried to overthrow the British Government. David Leigh. Pantheon, NY (1988). For Stalybridge mill histories in the cotton spinning period see the book by Ian Haynes: The Stalybridge Cotton Mills (1990) US Environmental Protection Agency Case Study: Phenol-formaldehyde reaction hazards (August 1999). Water Pollution Research Laboratory Report WPR 42/1058/1 National Archives 44/1/52 CF 4/2/S2 National Archives 44/1/164 CF 4/2/152 Ian Haynes The Cotton Mills of Dukineld (1990). On the YouTube website there is a video clip of dust extraction plant being lifted by a large crane on to the roof of Queen Mill in 1960. Another clip shows the demolition of the mill. Tower Mill is a Grade II Listed Building. 10 J. Bowes private document collection. Plans and elevation drawings of Castle Mill prepared by The Royal Engineers, 1945. Six sheets, drawn to scale 1 inch = 16 feet. Copy in Tameside Local Studies Library. 11 A biography of R.B. Bishop is at www. plasticsacademy.org. He later wrote a book called Practical Polymerization for Polystyrene (Cahners, 1971). 12 Zigmund Kromolicki was born in Poland, and during the Second World War served in Italy with refugee Polish army units attached to the British Eighth Army. After the war he took a degree in chemistry at London University, and then worked for a plastics company called O&M Kleeman Ltd. From there he moved to BXL Ltd at Brantham, Essex. At the time Margaret Thatcher, the future prime minister, was working in the BXL R&D laboratory (Lawford Place) as a chemist. Dr. C.B. (Clive) Bucknall, later to become an eminent expert in polymer physics, also worked there at that time. 13 There was doubt as to whether the Bailey Bridge could safely take the weight of the tanker loaded with rubber solution. As a precaution it was not driven over the bridge. The driver drove the tanker up to the bridge, clamped the steering wheel and left the cab. A forklift truck was positioned near the Globe Site end of the bridge. A steel rope was passed from it across the bridge to the Castle Mill side, and fastened to the front of the tanker. The forklift truck then pulled the tanker, with no driver in the cab, over to the Globe Site for unloading into a storage tank. 14 The so-called Tower Devol unit was dismantled by a local company, RSJ Engineering Ltd, who later sold it to Hindustan Polymers Ltd, located in Visakhapatnam on the east coast of India. 15 Testimony of Clarence Smith in United Sterling Corporation Ltd v. Felton and Mannion (High Court of Justice, March - April 1973). 16 In the improved second stage devolatilisation process a small amount of water is dispersed as microdroplets by injection at very high pressures into the ow of molten polymer as it enters a device called a static mixer. The dispersion of superheated water microdroplets ashes to form steam bubbles that make the molten polymer
Page 37
6 7 8 9
Notes and References
foam as it ows from the static mixer into a vacuum tank (the devolatiliser). The foaming action under vacuum enhances the removal of the residual monomer from the molten plastic. There is now a considerable scientic literature on the underlying theory and principles of the process. 17 The model is known as core-shell particle structure. 18 The location of the R&D building on Bridge Street beside Manros sulphonation plant was hazardous. Manro used large quantities of sulphur trioxide, delivered to the site in heated road tankers. Sulphur trioxide vaporises readily and reacts instantly with the moisture in the air to form sulphuric acid mist which is corrosive and toxic. Leaks during the tanker unloading operations created large clouds of sulphuric acid mist that rolled across to the laboratory building and into Bridge Street. Sometimes cars were damaged by the acid mist. 19 Fire Protection Manual for Hydrocarbon Processing Plants. Charles H. Vervalin (Ed). Gulf Publishing, Houston (1973) pages 43-46. On YouTube there are several examples of the detonation of ammable vapour clouds (fuel-air bombs). 20 Personal communication from victims.
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21 One of these arrangements was the Trust for Applied Chemistry, set up in the tax haven of Lichtenstein. The function of this Trust was to own the technology embodied in some of the polystyrene plants. Being vested with this ownership, the Trust was then able to charge a royalty on each ton of product manufactured. The royalty fee was deducted from the sales income and sent (legitimately) to Lichtenstein to avoid UK tax. 22 European Chemical News, January 15, 1979, p.4. 23 From 1969 until 1973 one of Dr McCurdys companies manufactured about 150,000 tons of Napalm B under contract to the US Air Force for use as a weapon in the Vietnam War. The manufacturing contract had been held by Dow Chemical Company from 1960 until 1969 when they relinquished it because of bad publicity arising from anti-war protests by university students in the US. Napalm B is an incendiary material made by blending polystyrene with a mixture of petrol and benzene to give a thick liquid gel that sticks to surfaces and burns intensely. The polystyrene plant (Diamond Plastics Inc) was in Los Angeles, and its output (27,000 tons per year) was used solely for Napalm B weapons production.
The Napalm B was prepared in special continuous mixing units fed with molten plastic from the end of the polystyrene plant. It was then cooled and pumped into aluminium bomb cases. Each bomb case held 350kg, and was tted with an explosive burster and a white phosphorus fuse that ignited the Napalm on impact. In 1983 the use of Napalm in warfare was banned under the Geneva Convention. The US is not a party to this ban, and used a modied version of Napalm B based on kerosene rather than petrol in 2003 in the Iraq war. The original version of Napalm, developed in the early 1940s and used until 1960, was made by mixing petrol with a soap to form a gel. The soap was made from naphthenic and palmitic acids, hence the name Napalm. It burned quickly and did not stick well to target surfaces. 24 Dr J.L. McCurdy an adventurer in polymer technology. (T.O. Craig, unpublished memoir). The legal issues arose from allegations by Dow Chemical Company that polystyrene producers in the US and Europe were infringing one of its patents (US Patent 2,694,692). Dow were seeking retrospective royalty payments and licence fees amounting to many millions of dollars from alleged infringers. This patent, granted in 1954, and known after its inventors as
the Amos-McCurdy-McIntire patent, claimed the invention of a particular process for making high impact polystyrene. The author (TC) was employed during 1965-69 in research on this topic (at Amoco Chemicals Corporation, a major defendant in the legal action) and later as an expert witness in litigation that led to the patent being held invalid by the US Federal Court in Los Angeles in 1970 after a lengthy trial. This was a landmark legal decision for the industry. Dr. McCurdy, after leaving Dow, had always asserted that he believed the patent to be invalid, and that he had merely signed the required declaration of invention under instruction from Dows patent lawyers that he had a duty to do so under the terms of his employment contract. His assertion carried little legal weight, and he never gave evidence in the Court case. The legal and technical background to the litigation is described in the following papers: 24a. G. Freeguard and J.T. Wallace: Industrial patents matter litigation concerning rubber modied polystyrene. Chemistry & Industry (1980) no.3 104112. 24b. J.L. Amos, The development of impact polystyrene a review. SPE
International Award Address published in Polymer Engineering and Science vol 14 no. 1 (1974) 1-11. 25. The BXC-1 catalyst was 2,3-dimethyl 2,3-diphenylbutane, made by reacting sec-butylbenzene with dibenzoyl peroxide in a small stainless steel reactor tted with a glass distillation column and receiver. Each batch was about 200 litres. It was shipped in 200 litre steel drums. 26. Styrene monomer was delivered in road tankers from BP Chemicals Ltd plants at Baglan Bay in S. Wales, and Grangemouth. 27. The process modication made to the front-end of the H-1 plant was given the name occluder-inverter technology for reasons that are beyond the scope of this history. 28. Mustard gas has nothing to do with mustard, nor is it a gas. It is made by reacting ethylene with sulphur dichloride, and is a liquid. It can be neutralised by contact with dilute bleach, which is used as a spray for washing contaminated personnel and equipment. 29. RSJ Engineering Ltd was owned by Jim Smith and Jim Riley.
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Publications and patents

T.O. Craig, R.M. Quick and T.E. Jenkins, Determination of particle size distribution in the discrete phase of impact polystyrene Part I. Errors in direct Coulter Counter technique. J.Polymer Science, Polymer Chemistry Edition v 15 433 (1977) Part II. An improved Coulter Counter procedure. Ibid. 441 (1977) T.O. Craig, Application of an enhanced ash-tank devolatilisation system to a degassing extruder. Advances in Polymer Technology v 10 no. 3 245 (1990). This reference is postSterling, but is included here because it illustrates one application of the water-assisted polymer devolatilisation process invented and rst installed at Stalybridge (on the H-1 plant) by the author. Later renements of the technology were patented (T.O. Craig: US Patents 6,211,311 and 6,410,683). T.O. Craig, A low cost force transducer for the Hounseld Tensometer. Laboratory Practice v 25 no 3 156 (1976) P.G. Patel and T.O. Craig, Multiple polymeric oil-in-oil emulsions and dispersions: a novel route to multiphase polymer systems of controlled morphology. J. Polymer Science Part A-1 1867 (1972) T.O. Craig, Comments on thermal stresses in rubber-modied glassy polymers. J. Materials Science v 12 1709 (1977) T.O. Craig, On the morphology of occlusions in the discrete phase of high impact polystyrene. J. Polymer Science (Polymer Chemistry Edition) v 12 no.9, 2105 (1974) T.O. Craig and T.E. Jenkins, Laboratory unit for predicting the performance of a large-scale static mixer. Chemistry and Industry (April 15 1978) 268 T.O. Craig, T.E. Jenkins, A. Marshall and J.R. Travis, British Patent 1,528,094 T.O. Craig and P.G. Patel, British Patents 1,342,079 and 1,536,537 and US Patent 3,875,260 T.O. Craig, British Patent 1,356,399 Z. Kromolicki and J.G. Robinson, A morphological study of multiphase polymer systems. In Advances in Polymer Science and Technology. Society of Chemistry & Industry (London) Monograph 26 (1966) pp 16-29 T.E. Jenkins and T. Sarraf, US Patent 5,708,081
Publications and patents
G.H. Foxley, The determination of organic peroxides. The Analyst (1961) vol. 86 348 T.O. Craig and A.J. Davey, Water pollution source detector. Chemical Engineering June 5 1978 172
Z. Kromolicki is named as inventor in the following British Patents: B.P. 1,013,688 B.P. 1,030,497 B.P. 1,040,287 B.P. 1,074,322 B.P. 1,097,589 B.P. 1.111,089 B.P. 1,141,210 B.P. 1,144,789 B.P. 1,128,441 also US Patent: 3,592,878
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R & D Laboratory. (LR: Roger Quick, Keith Greenwood, Tom Jenkins)
Analytical Section, R & D Laboratory. (Elaine Dodge)
Reactor control panel, Castle Mill
Clockwise from above: Tower Mill, Dukineld (courtesy of Chris Earl) Etherow Bleach Works, Hollingworth Queen Mill, Dukineld (from a letterhead of 1913)
Installation of a reactor vessel at the Stalybridge site
Lord Plurenden (Rudy Sternberg) 1978
STERLING MOULDING MATERIALS STAFF 1978 Back Row LR: 1. Barry Hale 2. Tricia Cowell 4. Chris Anderson 5. John Hayward 7. Duffy Alldus 8. Tom Craig 9. John Morton 12. John Currie 13. Alan Davey 14. Peter Doyle 15. Austin McTaff 16. Roy Smith 19. Don Taylor Middle Row LR: 1. Harry Lee 2. Ray McNulty 3. Don Sellars 4. Jean Connor 5. Bert Haley 6. Alan Beck 7. Alan Linton 8. John Mills 9. Frank Heywood 10. Richard Milner-Moore 11. Bob Symcox 12. John Ash 14. Guy Yeates 15. Jim Buttworth Front Row. LR: 1. Stuart Patrick 2. Malcom Jones 3. Peter Lillie 4. Roger Quick 5. C.C Patel 6. Peter Ashenden 7. Keith Greenwood 8. John Churcher 9. Peter Egerton
Derived from the Ordnance Survey of 1894
COTTON MILLS TO CHEMICAL PLANTS

Tom Craig and John Bowes
The origin and growth of the Sterling Group of companies in Stalybridge. In 1945 the cotton industry in the UK was dying, and many mills in Stalybridge and Dukineld lay empty. Rudy Sternberg, a London-based trader, bought ve of these mills and two large former engineering sites for conversion to chemical plants. The conversions began in 1948 at Albion Mill with the manufacture of phenolic resin moulding materials. Growth and diversication of Sternbergs operations continued for the next thirty years, and by 1979 they employed about 1000 people. Polystyrene manufacture became the biggest business, producing 60,000 tonnes per year in the late 1970s. Research and development work in Stalybridge created advances in plastics manufacturing technology that were adopted worldwide. Sternberg received a knighthood, and later a peerage for his services to industry and exports.
Content design: Tony Kershaw Information Design Copyright: Tom Craig and John Bowes 2013 Background image: Castle Mill 1976

Cotton Mills To Chemical Plants: A Chapter in The Recent Industrial History of Stalybridge

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COTTON MILLS TO CHEMICAL PLANTS

View over Stalybridge circa 1965, courtesy of Tameside Image Archive

Cotton Mills to Chemical Plants

The Stalybridge Site, 1995

Tom Craig and John Bowes 2013

Cotton Mills to Chemical Plants

Rudy Sternberg a biography

Sternberg at Stalybridge: the beginning of manufacture (Albion Mill, 1948)

Fig. 3 Albion Mill, early 1950s. Entrance to mill yard on right.

Sternberg at Stalybridge: the beginning of manufacture

Phenolic and UF resin manufacture

Sternberg at Stalybridge: the beginning of manufacture

Safety and environmental aspects of phenolic resin manufacture at Albion Mill

Sternberg at Stalybridge: the beginning of manufacture

Further developments at Albion Mill Sterling Coated Materials Ltd

Expansion of operations to Tower Mill and Etherow Works

Sterling Colour Company Ltd (Albion Mill)

The expansion to Queen Mill (Foundry Street, Dukineld)

Expansion of operations to Dukineld and Hollingworth

Expansion of operations to Dukineld and Hollingworth

The Sterling polystyrene operations in Stalybridge

Fig. 9 Zigmund Kromolicki (rear) and Jim Butterworth (front)

Polystyrene operations in Stalybridge

The suspension (or bead) process

Fig. 10 SAN System owsheet Page 13

The press process

Fig. 13 Press reactor, end-on-view. Hydraulic clamping ram is in the foreground.

Fig. 15 Material hoppers on the 3rd oor of Castle Mill

Fig. 14 Site plan in 1978

Fig. 20 Canal aqueduct over the River Tame

Fig. 21 Tower plant

Fig. 24 Tops of the tower reactors

Figs. 22, 23 Tower plant reactor area Polystyrene operations in Stalybridge

Fig. 26 Tower plant, with the canteen in the foreground

Polystyrene operations in Stalybridge

The semi-continuous polystyrene process in Castle Mill

The U-Tube process

Figs. 31, 32 H-1 plant

Large-scale continuous polystyrene manufacture

Fig. 33 Marvin Jarvis

Large-scale continuous polystyrene manufacture

Figs. 36, 37 H-2 plant

Large-scale continuous polystyrene manufacture

Fig. 39 Colour laboratory Page 27

Large-scale continuous polystyrene manufacture

Figs. 41, 42 Repair of horizontal reactor, Phoenix Works

Fig. 40 Broadbent stone crusher, preserved at Portland Basin Museum Page 28

Large-scale continuous polystyrene manufacture

Large-scale continuous polystyrene manufacture

The polystyrene business after Sternbergs death in 1978

Fig. 45 H-3 plant under construction

Large-scale continuous polystyrene manufacture

Technology developments at Stalybridge

Large-scale continuous polystyrene manufacture

Safety and environmental aspects of the Sterling polystyrene operations

Fig. 46 Cleaning up the River Tame at Castle Mill Page 32

Safety and environmental aspects of the Sterling polystyrene operations

Fig. 47 Construction of interceptor pit on Globe Site Page 33

Safety and environmental aspects of the Sterling polystyrene operations

Postscript: The Globe Site history

Fig. 50 John Summers locomotive at level crossing on Bayley Street

Notes and references

Notes and References